


The Road to Damascus

by FindingFeathersSeanchaidh



Category: Veritas: The Quest
Genre: Adventure & Romance, F/M, Slow Burn, researched
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-18
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 82,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24114106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FindingFeathersSeanchaidh/pseuds/FindingFeathersSeanchaidh
Summary: Two years on, Nikko's graduation brings him back to the bosom of the team. There's a lot to catch up on, he finds, and he is as determined as ever to get the full story. Can he draw out his friends' secrets, however, without them discovering his?
Relationships: Juliet Droil/Calvin Banks, Juliet Droil/Original Character
Comments: 28
Kudos: 18





	1. "Doctor Droil, I presume?"

The summer breeze drifted gently across a wide, grassy lawn before a large, imposing, stately building. The sun shone brightly on crowds of people laughing and chattering, gathering together in familial clumps or weaving their way through the crowd towards marquees and drinks stands. In every brightly coloured cluster there stood at berobed figure or two, the dark black of their capes and caps contrasting clearly with their surroundings.

In the shade of a marquee awning, a young woman stood alone, gazing into the distance as if lost in thought, her black robes drifting in the breeze.

"Doctor Droil, I presume," said a familiar voice from behind the young woman.

Juliet Droil turned, her face breaking into a wide, genuine smile as she did so.

"Nikko!" Juliet cried, "I didn't think you could make it!"

"Yeah, well, who needs college? I mean it, I get enough lectures from my dad as it is without having to sit through one or two extra hours worth of psych stuff I'm probably never gonna use, right?"

"You shouldn't be blowing off college just for this, Nikko!"

"Hey, trust me, I've got a dozen other reasons not to go to that class! Besides, what with dad and the others up in Alaska, I figured at least one of us should show face!"

"Well, it was sweet of you. Thank you. So: how is college anyway? Blown up anything recently?"

"Not there, no," Nikko laughed and glanced at his feet. "Their toilets have much better security! How about you? How does it feel to be a doctor at last? Congratulations on that, by the way."

"Thanks," Juliet smiled, "It feels good. Now, at least, when Cal gets too big for his boots, I have a handy doctorate to beat him down to size with!"

"So you're staying?" Nikko asked, looking up, surprised, "I thought you were just working there until you finished your PhD?"

"So did I, but your dad offered me a place on the team for as long as I wanted it. He said he'd rather keep us all together since we work well as a team. Plus he knows he can trust all of us."

"And if it ain't broke, don't fix it," Nikko sighed, wistfully.

"Something like that," said his one-time tutor, not quite meeting his eyes.

"So is there anyone else here for you or what?"

"Oh, Anthony's here.” Juliet waved a hand randomly at the hubbub of people. “He's just gone to get me a drink."

"Anthony?"

"Oh, I forgot, you haven't met him! Anthony and I have been together for about six months now."

"Six months?” Nikko’s jaw dropped. “What? How come I didn't know about this? Does nobody tell me anything now?"

"Oh come on, Nikko, it's hardly headline news! Besides, you never asked!"

"So, what, is it serious? I mean it, how did you meet this guy? What do you know about him?"

“Nikko, you're as bad as Cal! You’re my ex-pupil, you know, not my brother!"

"Oh, so Cal doesn't like the guy either?"

"What do you mean ‘either’,” Juliet snapped. “You haven't even met him yet! And Cal doesn't seem to like anyone just now."

"But I’m meant to be working with him this summer!" Nikko wailed, his eyes rolling heavenward.

Juliet smirked and glanced over Nikko’s shoulder.

"Ah," she said, as a tall, dark haired young man approached them, "here he is. Nikko, meet Anthony Blake. Anthony, this is Nikko Zond, an old student of mine; and an old friend."

"The famous Nikko," Anthony Blake drawled lazily, "I've heard so much about you."

"Sorry Tony," Nikko replied, "’fraid I can't say the same for you."

Juliet winced and rolled her eyes at Nikko’s deliberate use of the shorter form of her boyfriend's name. She knew Anthony wouldn't say anything now, in front of Nikko, but she was sure he would blame her for it later.

The rest of the day passed a little quicker spent in the presence of her jovial ex-pupil, but the few weeks that followed, as Juliet awaited the return of her friends, seemed to drag into an eternity. Eventually, the day arrived that found her standing in the forecourt of the Veritas Foundation building, conversing animatedly with Anthony.

"I just don't understand why, now that you have your doctorate, you still want to work here!" Anthony cried in frustration, "You could easily begin your own research elsewhere; somewhere more... more suitable!"

"Somewhere safer, you mean!"

"Well, yes, somewhere safer. One of your proposed team-mates just made his own way home with a broken leg and dislocated shoulder, all because your precious Dr Zond dragged him off to some remote glacier up the top of Alaska on some kind of wild goose chase!"

"Cal will be fine. He's had worse injuries!"

"Somehow, Juliet, that does not reassure me!"

"They are my friends,” said Juliet, her tone as cold as ice. “I've worked with them on this project for years."

"So you've done your bit,” Anthony’s voice was as warm as his beloved’s was cold. His hands came to rest on Juliet’s shoulders reassuringly. “You can hardly expect them to think badly of you for wanting to do something else with your life!"

"But that's a just it, Anthony, I don't,” Juliet explained patiently. “I want to do this and that's all there is to it. Now let me go!"

Pulling her arm out of his grasp, Juliet hastened through the doorway and up the stairs, disappearing out of Anthony’s sight. With one last, bitter grimace in her direction, he turned and stalked off, disappearing round a corner of the building.

"I swear, if that guy ever lays a finger on her, I'll kill him!"

Nikko looked up, hearing Cal’s voice, and saw the heavily bandaged young man glaring out of the window.

"Who? That Blake guy?" Nikko asked, walking over, throwing a ball from hand to hand. "Why? Do you think he would?"

"I don't know that he wouldn't," Calvin replied through gritted teeth.

"Hey, am I missing something here, man?" Nikko pressed, sitting down on the windowsill Cal was looking out of, "Did something happen between you and Juliet while I was away? ‘Cause, you know, this does not sound like the concern of an over-cautious friend. Man, this sounds like jealousy, pure and un-simple."

"Leave it, Nikko, it's none of your business. Besides, un-simple is not a word."

"Hey, chill man, I'm on your side here. I'm not exactly Tony's biggest fan myself. The guy is too far up his own... Ah, Juliet, and how are you this fine morning?"

"Drop the pretence, Nikko, it's obvious you were talking about me," Juliet said severely, depositing her bag and a jacket in the vestibule provided, "And before you ask, he was just worried about me coming back to work here after Cal’s accident."

"What? So because _I'm_ clumsy _you_ can’t work here?" Calvin burst out, still staring out of the window.

Juliet sighed and looked over at Cal. For a moment, Nikko thought he saw a flash of pain across her face, and then it was merely a look of concern she bore.

"What happened?" Juliet asked, "You look pretty beat up."

"I've had worse," Calvin replied sullenly.

"I know, I was there," Juliet said waspishly, "That wasn't what I asked."

"I fell!" Calvin snapped, wheeling the chair that was temporarily supporting him round to face Juliet, "I fell. Happy? Now at least I won't be around to mess up any other expeditions for you!"

Manoeuvring his wheelchair furiously, Calvin left the room. Nikko, who had witnessed the exchange in silence, watched the look of shock, mingled with anger and pain, unfold on his ex-teacher’s face.

"Well," Nikko said last, "Seems to me there's a lot of news I missed out on while I was at college. Now it doesn't look like Cal will be showing his face for a while and I know dad, Maggie and Vincent won't be back until tomorrow, so spill: what happened between you and Cal these last two years?"

Juliet looked up at Nikko and held his gaze for a moment or two. The teenager raised his eyebrows expectantly and shrugged, his face smug.

"I'm gonna find out somehow, so you might as well give me your side of the story now," he said.

Juliet sighed, pushed the books and papers she had brought with her to one side and sat down. Nikko walked forward and sat in the chair on the opposite side of the desk.

"So," he said, "Tell me how it all started."

* * * *

_ 6½ Months Ago  _

_On a deserted airstrip some miles outside Jerusalem, a private jet touched down. The door opened and stairs descended to the weed infested, dusty tarmac. Vincent led the way, followed closely by Dr Zond and Cal, all carrying equipment. Maggie followed, carrying bags also, and calling back over her shoulder to the young woman who was last to emerge. After a moment Juliet appeared at the jet’s doorway, heavy bag in hand._

_"I think that's everything from in here," she said a she descended the steps "That just leaves the stuff in the hold."_

_"I'll make a start on that," Vincent said, walking round to the other side of the jet and leaving the growing pile of equipment with the others._

_Suddenly there was a sharp cry of alarm from Juliet. Not far from the bottom of the steps, her bag had caught on something. The weight of the bag and her own momentum threw Juliet off-balance and spun her round, so that she felt herself falling backwards through the air and down the stairs. She flung her hands out to grab hold of something and, as they met something solid, she felt her fall broken by a pair of arms now wrapped around her._

_Tearing her eyes away from the no longer receding jet, Juliet looked up to see that it was Cal who had caught her. Her left arm had landed a hold around his neck and he was holding her ‘Gone With The Wind’ style around her back and waist._

_"You know, if you were planning on falling for me, I could have done with a bit more warning!" Cal joked, although his eyes never left Juliet's for a moment._

_There was silence._

_For once, Juliet couldn’t think of anything to say. Time seemed to stop: an eternity passed with the two gazing into each other's eyes._

_"Hey Juliet! You okay? " Dr Zond yelled, breaking the spell of the moment._

_Juliet blinked and looked round just in time to see Maggie punch Solomon's arm and Vincent hold up his hands, refusing to back up his friend as Dr Zond appealed to him silently._

_Juliet let Cal help her stand up, noticing as she did so that his cheeks were a little flushed and wondering if hers were the same._

_"I'm fine," she called, dusting herself down and straightening her hair and clothes before retrieving her bag, "I just slipped. No harm done._

* * * *

"That was how it started," Juliet told Nikko as the younger man listened patiently, "One stupid slip. One crucial moment."


	2. “You know, I never thought I'd see the day you actually managed to graduate from college.”

“Dad!" Nikko’s shout echoed through the hallway.

"I'm on my way, son!" Solomon Zond shouted back, emerging a few minutes later from his office.

"Come on, Dad, we're gonna be late!"

"We won’t be late, Nikko; now have you got everything?"

"Yeah, I've got everything! Dad, I’ve been ready for a half hour already!"

"Well let's go then. You know, I never thought I'd see the day you actually managed to graduate from college."

"Gee, thanks, Dad. Nice to know how much faith you had in me!" Nikko teased before picking up his bag and following his father out of the building.

The graduation ceremony took well over an hour and was drawing near to two hours when Solomon, Vincent and Maggie finally were able to shake Nikko’s hand and congratulate him. Juliet and Anthony walked over to offer their own congratulations, while Calvin watched them with a scowl on his face.

"You know, you never did tell me why you hate the guy so much," Nikko said as he left his father and the others talking business and sat down next to Calvin’s wheelchair.

"Do I need a reason?" Calvin snapped, "Besides, you're hardly his number one fan yourself."

"Yeah, but I just think the guy is creepy. You: man, you really seem to loathe him!"

"You know what, buddy? " Calvin said, with false cheerfulness, "I'll tell you a secret. Come here."

Nikko leaned over as Calvin beckoned to him.

"What?" Nikko whispered.

"It's none of your business," Calvin whispered back, before turning his wheelchair round and moving off on the direction of the drinks tent.

"Cal okay?" Solomon Zond asked his son as he sauntered over, a handing Nikko a glass of orange juice. 

"He's just being his usual cheerful self," Nikko quipped, taking the glass, "I thought you said he was getting over Sophie? He seems as bad as ever: worse even!"

"Oh, he was," Solomon confirmed, "This is just recent. Past six months at most. It seemed to start with our trip out to the Holy Land. I'm sure something happened out there to cause it, but neither of them will say what."

"Neither?"

"Cal and Juliet. We were based in Jerusalem. We found some texts that pointed towards something that Damascus. I needed Maggie and Vincent with me, so I sent Cal and Juliet. The journey took them quite a few weeks all told. Longer than it should have, much longer. Something happened on that trip, I know: I just don't know what."

“Damascus. Isn’t that, like, where that Saint Paul guy went to? I thought it was miles away from Jerusalem? Why not just send them in the jet?”

“Three reasons,” Solomon told his son, sipping his drink, “First, yes, it is miles away, but not far enough to warrant using the jet; second, if I had sent them in the jet, they would have had to cross various different airspaces, some of which are disputed and then organise a landing site in Syria; and third, with the way things are going with the territory disputes in Jerusalem and the West Bank just now, we might have needed the jet for a quick exit at any moment. The majority of the gear stayed with us, as well as all the artefacts we had found so far, bar the ones Cal and Juliet took with them. They had all their stuff in their backpacks and between them they either speak or can work out enough of any languages used in the area to get by okay. They had their medics covers and didn’t stick out too much in the crowd. They shouldn’t have had any problems. They should have been there and back within a week. Instead they were almost a month.”

“What? And you just left them to it? You weren’t worried about them? What if Dorna had got them?”

“Of course we were worried, but we knew they were okay,” Solomon shrugged, “Juliet checked in with us every night by the satellite phone. Sometimes Cal was with her, sometimes he wasn’t, but every night she told us that they were both fine, they had travelled to such and such a place, they had found this or that: all the basic details, but nothing in depth. There was a point where we didn’t see Cal for a whole week, but Juliet assured us he was fine, just working on something. They said they had come across something on the way and if all went well, they’d tell us all about it when they got back.”

“And did they?”

“Apparently they found some sort of underground labyrinth, possibly some early catacombs. They did some work there, mapping and suchlike, all the usual groundwork, meaning to go back later, but with Juliet getting to the end of her PhD and our trip to Alaska, they never did. I still haven’t seen most of the stuff they found there: we’ve been too busy with the rest.”

“What happened in Alaska?” Nikko asked his father, watching him shrewdly.

Solomon’s face darkened slightly and he looked down at his glass, avoiding eye contact with his son.

“Maybe you should talk to Cal about that,” Solomon said quietly.

Nikko frowned.

“What is it, Dad?”

“Like I said, Nikko: talk to Cal.”

Nikko watched, still frowning in puzzlement, as his father drained his glass then turned and walked off towards the drinks tent. Looking around, Nikko found himself on his own.

“Great,” he said to himself, “whose graduation is this anyway?”

Meandering among the crowds, Nikko spotted Calvin, glowering through the mass of people in one, very particular direction. Nikko followed his gaze and saw Anthony Blake, his arm around Juliet’s shoulders. Blake was watching Juliet closely as the couple talked and he certainly was not paying much attention to where he was going. As they walked through the various aggregations of people, Nikko noticed that they too were heading for one of the refreshments areas, where numerous tables were scattered around bearing canapés, sandwiches and drinks of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic varieties.

_ If only that table were a little to the right, _ thought Nikko.

The young man grinned as he imagined the effect, picturing it clearly in his mind. No sooner had he done so than there was a yelp of pain as Anthony Blake walked straight into the corner of the table, positioned at a very uncomfortable height. Nikko blinked. He was sure they had been on a course to miss the table. He laughed a little, uncertain of what he had seen, then noticed Calvin. The look on the young man’s face was not one of joy at the petty downfall of an opponent, nor even sympathetic pain, it was sheer bewilderment. Nikko’s eyes flicked from Cal’s face to the doubled up figure of Anthony Blake by the table. He swallowed nervously. Was the table exactly where it had been? He had been sure before; now he wasn’t. What was more: if it _had_ moved, then Cal had seen it do so.

Nikko tried to regain his composure. Up until now, the ability he had discovered two years ago, to move objects, had only brought nearby things closer to him. He had been careful, very careful, to keep his new talent hidden, using it only when he was alone in his room at college or at home. He had never even tried to move things away from him and had never even considered trying to move anything so large or so far away. He hadn’t even told his father: he had been waiting for that never-present occurrence, the ‘right moment’.

Seeing that Cal was about to go over to Juliet and Blake, Nikko hurried over.

“Hey, Cal!” Nikko called, stopping the young archaeologist in his wheelchair-bound tracks and racing to his side, “What’s up, man? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

“What?” Cal replied, his eyes flicking between the offending table and Nikko, “Oh, no, I just thought... It’s nothing, never mind.”

“I’d have thought you’d be rolling in the aisles at old Tony over there,” Nikko said, his voice forcefully cheerful, “I mean, man, that must have hurt!”

“Oh, y-you saw that?” Cal fixed his gaze on Nikko a little more solidly, “D-did you...? I mean...”

“What?” Nikko tried to keep his tone jovial.

“Did you do something to that table?”

“What? Me?” Nikko could feel the panic begin to creep into his voice, “H-how could I? I was over there: behind you!”

“You didn’t have some string or something rigged up? A friend standing by the table or something?”

“What? No!” Nikko felt relief flooding into him, “I mean, even I couldn’t know they were going to walk by that table, right?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course! What? You think I’m psychic or something?”

“Then how come I just saw that table move about a foot to the right just before Blake hit it?”

“How should I know?” Nikko thought fast, “Maybe someone was leaning against the other side. Maybe there are more than two people here who don’t like Blake.”

“Maybe,” Cal echoed, casting a glance back to where Juliet was looking after Blake then looking away sullenly.

“So... Er...” Nikko paused, not quite sure how to broach the subject but wanting to take Calvin’s mind off Juliet and Blake, “you gonna tell me what happened in Alaska?”

“There’s nothing to tell, Nikko.”

“Come on, man, you fell far enough to end up in a wheelchair. Even if it is just temporary, that kind of injury has to have a story behind it.”

“Not one I want to tell.”

“Well, then it’s something you shouldn’t keep bottled up. Just tell me and get it over with. You’ll feel better if you do.”

“You sure about that?”

“Well, you won’t have me bugging you for one thing. I mean, that’s gotta be a plus!”

Cal gave a short, cynincal laugh and shook his head.

“I fell, Nikko, that’s all there is to it.”

“If that’s all there is to it, then why won’t Dad tell me what happened?”

Cal looked away, frowning, then looked back.

“Fine,” he said, “I’ll tell you. But not here. Let’s go find somewhere quieter. Away from those two.”

Nikko glanced over at Juliet and her beau and nodded, following as Cal wheeled his way through the crowd and back into the now deserted college building.


	3. "You have got to be kidding me!"

_ Six Weeks Ago _

_ “You have  _ got _to be kidding me!” Solomon Zond exclaimed emphatically looking at the forbidding topology before him and his team._

_ “That’s the co-ordinates, Solomon,” Maggie assured him, “That’s where we’ll find it.” _

_ “Or our next clue,” Vincent observed. _

_ “If it’s even still there,” Cal added. _

_ Before the group, towering up into the snowy distance, was a pinnacle of rock and ice. The team had travelled for most of the long hours of daylight and, although the hour was late, the sun was still present above the horizon. At that time of year, in such northerly latitudes, the sun hardly dipped below it and full darkness never really fell. _

_ “Okay,” Solomon sighed and nodded, “Let’s set up camp. We’ll do a tour of the base of the rock tomorrow: see what we can find out about the lie of the land. I don’t want to climb it if I don’t have to and if there is even the slightest hint of a cave or crevice we’ll check that out first.” _

_ In what shelter from the ever present wind the rock offered, the team pitched their tent. The thick, well insulated edifice had been carried in parts on the various supply trailers attached to the group’s individual skidoos and, once assembled, provided quarters for all four travellers. Maggie and Calvin slept fitfully on opposite sides of the domed structure, Solomon slept as soundly as if he were at home in his own bed and Vincent lay silent and still, whether asleep or discreetly watchful it was impossible to tell. _

_ The next morning, when Solomon awoke to find that Cal had already given up his struggle to find rest while both Maggie and Vincent now dozed peacefully, the light filtering through the tent suggested a duller day. Sure enough, when the team made their way outside, they found the sky above overcast and threatening snow. _

_ “Let’s get on with it,” Solomon said as Maggie handed round equipment, “Hopefully we can get this thing before that cloud bursts.” _

_ Leaving Maggie with the computer equipment in the relative warmth of the tent, the three men made their way around the base of the protrusion. _

_ “I hate to say this,” Cal announced as they turned around a second sharp corner of rock, “but this is beginning to have an awfully familiar feel.” _

_ “I know what you mean,” Solomon replied, scanning the rock face with the gadget in his hand as well as his narrowed, sharp eyes, “but I can’t get any good readings. If this is what we think it is, either the glyphs aren’t on this part of it, have never been on any part of it or, most likely, have been worn off by wind and ice.” _

_ Eventually, the three made their way around a fourth corner and back to the camp. Maggie was waiting for them in the tent with her eyebrows raised. _

_ “I take it you got the data back okay then,” Solomon said, walking over to where Maggie sat and peering over her shoulder at the computer screen. _

_ “Not only that,” Maggie replied, “I’ve used the lines on this side of the pyramid to work out what sort of size it was originally. Even sheltered as it is from the prevailing wind, there will still have been some erosion from the ice, so I can’t be accurate, but taking into consideration the material it is made of and the amount that is missing, I’d say this pyramid is at least as old as the one we found in Antarctica, possibly even older.” _

_ “There doesn’t seem to be any hint of layers, as far as I can see,” Cal mused as he looked over the image on the computer screen, “and it certainly isn’t having the same effect on its surroundings as the one in Antarctica. That could point to it being built with a different technology, maybe an older one.” _

_ “Or it could just point to it being built for a different purpose,” Solomon observed, “I didn’t pick up any cracks or possible openings in the rock face though.” _

_ “If there is a way in, it would be much lower,” said Vincent, “Remember how far below the ice the pyramid in Antarctica descended. We cannot be sure of much, but we can be sure that what we see here is merely the tip of a far larger structure.” _

_ “You’re beginning to sound like an archaeologist!” Solomon teased. _

_ “Let’s just say that I’m familiar with the concept of hidden depths,” Vincent quipped. _

_ “Well, we can’t go in,” Solomon shrugged, “And we certainly can’t go down. Not with this equipment. That leaves us with going up. Maggie: you stay here with the computer equipment and keep an eye on us. Let me know if there’s any change in the weather heading our way.” _

_ “Weather reports say there’s a seventy per cent chance of snow within the next three hours,” Maggie told him, “Think you can make it?” _

_ “We’ve got to try. If we wait until the storm passes and it does break here, then the new snow will make the climb more dangerous. We’ll take this side: it’s not as eroded as the others, which might make it difficult to get a grip on it, but it’s not as steep, it’s more sheltered and if there is anything left higher up, any doorways or inscriptions, it’ll be on this side.” _

_ “Understood.” _

_ The three men made their way back out of the tent, hurrying towards the near side of the pyramid. Vincent led the climb, followed by Solomon, then Cal. The eroded tip of the pyramid stood hundreds of feet above them, a faint white point against a grey, cloudy sky. _

_ For the first hour, everything was going well, then Maggie’s voice crackled through the radios. _

_ “Solomon, the weather front has moved. It’s heading directly towards you now and it’s moving fast. You’ll have snow within the next half hour or so if it keeps this course and I’m not just talking the edge of the storm, I mean the whole thing.” _

_ “Thanks Maggie,” Solomon called back on his radio, “We’ll try and get a move on.” _

_ “If we pick up the pace a bit, we should be on the way back down before the storm hits,” Vincent advised his comrade, “And, once it does, we should still be sheltered by the pyramid itself.” _

_ “Let’s get going then,” called Cal. _

_ As the pyramid narrowed, the climbers fell into line below each other. With the wind whipping round the sides of the pinnacle, the climbers slowed. They were just a few metres from the top when the storm began hurling snow, sleet and ice at them from the other side of the pyramid. _

_ “I’ve got some glyphs!” Vincent shouted down over the noise of the wind, “they look similar to the ones we found in Antarctica and in Haley’s journal.” _

_ “Only similar?” Solomon called back. _

_ “There is another here: it looks more Egyptian. It’s an eye.” _

_ “Like the eye of Horus?” _

_ “Yes, I think so. It’s hard to tell from the weathering.” _

_ “Can you move it? Is it a switch? Is there a panel there?” _

_ “I’m just clearing off the snow now. I think there is something here. There’s a break in the glyphs. It’s too regular to be a crack. It’s round.” _

_ “Try and push it or twist it or something.” _

_ “I think it’s hollow. Like the one on Elm Island. Hang on.” _

_ Barely visible above him, Solomon could see the snow-obscured figure of Vincent pull out an ice-pick from his supplies. He had just raised the pick to strike the pyramid when there was a cry and Solomon felt himself pulled suddenly downwards. _

_ “Cal?” Solomon cried, struggling to maintain a hand-hold on the icy rock, “You okay?” _

_ “Something hit me,” Cal’s voice shouted up from below, “I lost my grip. I can’t move my arm. You’re gonna have to cut me loose.” _

_ “No way. Not from up here.” _

_ “The angle of the slope should mean that I can just roll or slide down. It’s not a sheer drop, just a long one, but I’ve a better chance if I don’t have to worry about being landed on by you two.” _

_ “Another minute and we’ll be heading down anyway. Just try and hold on with your good arm.” _

_ “And then what? You can’t carry me down, it’s too dangerous. You have to cut the rope. I’ll land near enough to the tent and you can grab the artefact and get down safely.” _

_ “He’s right Solomon: you have to cut him loose,” Vincent called down from above, “We can’t hold his weight and if he brings us down with him, on top of him, he has no chance.” _

_ Two hours later an unconscious Calvin was strapped to the supplies trailer of Vincent’s skidoo as the other three made the last checks on their supplies and newly acquired find before heading back, post haste, to the nearest form of civilization. _

****

“So that’s it,” Calvin finished, “we ran into some bad weather and I lost my grip. I nearly cost us the artefact, but Vincent managed to get it anyway. It’s a circular disc, like the wheel of Dharma but with the eye of Horus at its centre. We think it’s another part of the ring.”

“And my dad: he just cut the rope? He let you fall?” Nikko asked, aghast.

Calvin looked uncomfortable and avoided Nikko’s eyes.

“Not quite,” said a voice.

Nikko looked up to see Maggie standing in the doorway behind Cal.

“What Cal’s not telling you is that he cut the rope himself,” she said gently, “Your father wouldn’t let him go so easily, and the storm was getting worse, so your friend here took matters into his own hands. He was lucky. If the slope of the pyramid had been much steeper, his leg wouldn’t have been all he broke in that fall.”

Nikko looked back at Cal who was staring at the wall with gritted determination. He was confused. On one hand, Cal had been about to let him believe that it was Nikko’s own father who had put him in his present condition and risked killing him in doing so. On the other, Cal had risked both life and limb, by his own hand, to make sure that his father and Vincent were in no greater danger than necessary and that they got the vital piece that had warranted the dangerous ascent in the first place.

“Y-your arm,” Nikko said, avoiding the topic, “it was whatever hit it up there that dislocated it?”

Cal nodded stiffly.

“Any idea what it was?”

“We think it could have been a large ball of compacted ice or a chunk of rock broken off from somewhere else and blown by the storm,” Maggie said, filling in Cal’s silence, “Whatever it was, it left a good sized bruise in his shoulder, even after the ones from the fall started to disappear. He was lucky that it was just his shoulder it hit. If his head hadn’t been behind the pyramid, a blow of that magnitude would easily have knocked him out, even with the helmet, and could even have killed him outright.”


	4. "Don't you ever knock?"

Nikko wandered through his father's apartment and adjoining offices and workrooms, passing a bean-filled ball from hand to hand. He was looking for Juliet. Between the story she had told him before his graduation and the story he had heard from his father after the ceremony, he was sure there was a lot both she and Cal weren't telling. He had tried asking Cal, but the older man had clammed up on him, wheeling himself off in with a sour look on his face and locking himself into the Veritas building rooms he was staying in.

As he rounded the corner of a doorway, he saw Juliet leaning over something and examining it closely with a hand lens. She was alone for once: the first time since the graduation that he had seen her so. Glancing over his shoulder, he put the ball into his pocket and crept up behind her. As he reached her, Nikko craned his neck to see what artefact she was examining, expecting to see the section of the ring of truth his father and the others had retrieved from Alaska. Instead, he was surprised to find a roll of parchment stretched out on the desk, its characters resembling an odd mixture of Arabic and Hieratic symbols.

"Did they bring that back from Alaska?" Nikko asked suddenly, making Juliet jump in surprise.

"Don't you ever knock?" Juliet drawled, glaring at him over her glasses.

"There's no door!" Nikko protested, gesturing towards the doorway to verify his claim. It was true: there wasn't. "And how else am I supposed to find out what's going on around here? Nobody tells me anything any more!"

"Well don't look at me: I'm still waiting to be graced with the details of their last trip myself and I get paid for being here!"

"Ah, so the parchment's not from Alaska then!" Nikko grinned at having acquired the answer Juliet had seemed reluctant to give.

"No," Juliet sighed, resignedly, "it isn't."

"Then where?" Nikko persisted. "The Holy Land? That trip you were telling me about before?"

Juliet turned away from him and back to the parchment. She sighed.

"Juliet, tell me! Come on: what do you think I'm gonna do? Run off to Dorna with it?"

"Hardly," Juliet muttered, perusing the document again, "I think they would have made a move already if it was something _they_ wanted."

"So it's not connected to the ring?"

"I don't know," the young woman admitted thoughtfully, removing her glasses and raising the parchment to eye level, "I have no idea what it is yet."

"What does my Dad think?"

Juliet put the parchment down and turned away again, heading for another part of the room: the bookcases on the far wall.

"He doesn't know!" Nikko exclaimed, "He doesn't, does he?"

"I don't want to waste his time on something that is probably no more than a meaningless puzzle!"

"What makes you so sure it _is_ meaningless? It could be just the clue he's looking for!"

"Nikko, things that have meaning to your father usually have meaning to other people too: people who tend to try, rather violently, to obtain those things for themselves! Nothing of that kind has happened to us since we found the parchment, so I assume, therefore, it is meaningless," Juliet paused and raised a finely-shaped eyebrow, "in that sense anyhow!"

"You said 'we'," Nikko continued, "You mean you and Cal? Was this something you found when you were stuck down in those catacombs?"

"How do you know about the catacombs?" Juliet asked sharply, turning to look at Nikko, her eyes narrowed.

"Dad mentioned something. He was a bit sketchy on the details, but he said you were down there for about a month!"

Juliet's gaze softened a little and she turned back to the bookcase. For a few moments she was silent, her head tilted and her eyes flicking along the line of volumes. Eventually she selected one, pulled one out and thumbed through the index. Finding something useful, she opened the book to the correct page and handed it to Nikko.

"Hold this," she ordered, turning back to repeat the process with another volume, "Since you're so determined to be a part of things you can help me translate the parchment."

"I'll have to hear the full story of how you found it."

"Fine," Juliet sighed, knowing better than to argue with Nikko now that he had seen the scroll, "Just keep it to yourself for now."

"What, I can't even tell Cal? I thought you found it together?"

"Yes, we did, but he doesn't know I'm looking at it without him. I didn't want to bother him with this until he was fully recovered. He's got enough on his plate with the stuff they brought back from Alaska. The Eye of Horus wasn't the only artefact they found out there you know."

"Surely he'd understand..." Nikko began, but Juliet cut him off caustically.

"Cal doesn't seem to understand much these days!"

"Since when?" Nikko cried, rolling his eyes in frustration before lowering his voice to continue. "What is this? What's going on between you two? There's more to this than a simple slip off the jet steps! Something happened between you two out in those catacombs! Something big! Dad said there was a period where they didn't see Cal on the videophone for an entire week and Cal himself keeps hinting that he messed up last time you two worked together. What happened? Did he go haring off on his own or something? Did you? Tell me!"


	5. "The hills have eyes..."

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Juliet sighed. “So much happened on that trip. So much changed. Too much, really.”

“You told me what happened when you landed,” said Nikko. “Dad told me that he had to send you and Cal off to Damascus on your own. He said the journey should have taken a week. How about you start by telling me when things first started to go wrong?”

****

_ Seven Months Ago _

_They had managed to get a lift in a battered old jeep. It had been cross country on possibly the worst suspension Juliet had ever experienced, but it had got them further along the road to Damascus anyway. Now they were standing in what passed for a village square in these parts, their bags on their backs and their eyes darting about for signs of life. The drive had been a long one, skirting round the edge of the border until they were finally within sight of the sea of Tiberias, or Galilee. Juliet wasn’t sure of the name of the village - she had been a little preoccupied with staying in the jeep as it bounced along - but Cal had assured her he knew exactly where they were and what direction they were headed in._

_“We’ll have to walk most of the rest of the way into Syria, though,” he had said. “There are huge chunks of land around here with no roads at all, not to mention the massive buffer zone between the ceasefire lines.”_

_“Any ideas how we get across that?” Juliet avoided Cal’s eyes. She hadn’t looked him directly in the eye for a week now. Not since her fall at the landing site. She wasn’t exactly looking forward to spending so much time alone with him._

_“There’s a couple of possibilities,” Cal shrugged. His grasp of the modern local languages was much better than hers and he had managed to maintain a conversation with their driver for most of the last few hours. “We could simply walk straight up to the UN Disengagement Observer Force ceasefire lines, knock on the door, wave our medic badges and hope they’ll let us through.”_

_“Somehow I doubt it!” Juliet raised an eyebrow._

_“Or,” Cal bent down and started drawing a map in the dusty ground, “we walk from here to Mevo Hama, find an acquaintance of our friend who brought us here, drive from there to Boutaiha then trek across one of the corners of the ceasefire lines and on to Jasim, then find some transport to take us from there up to Damascus.”_

_“How far is that?”_

_“The longest hike is from Boutaiha to Jasim,” Cal drew a line between the two points on his dust-map. “It’s about 20 kilometres as the crow flies. On the ground, with the topology around here, considerably more. Plus we’ll have to try and stay hidden. The hills have eyes, as they say. And around here, sometimes, the eyes have guns.”_

_“We don’t have supplies for that kind of trip, Cal.”_

_“We’ll pick them up along the way,” Cal shrugged, obliterating the dust-map and standing up. He turned to Juliet, who suddenly seemed absorbed in adjusting the strap of her rucksack. “We’ll get there, Juliet. We just have to be careful and plan for a long journey.”_

_****_

“Of course, he was right,” Juliet told Nikko, leaning against the table and watching the doorway for any signs of approach by Cal or any of the rest of the team. “We did get there and it was a long journey, and if he hadn’t stocked up on as much food and water as he did when we got to Mevo Hama, we probably wouldn’t have made it. I could barely carry my pack, and his was twice the size nearly, but believe me we were glad of it in the end. I still don’t know how we managed to avoid detection crossing that buffer zone, but we did. A few bribes, a secret tunnel or two and then there we were: in Syria, walking across open country towards Jasim. We spent the first night camped in the rubble of a ruined farmhouse about half way. At least, that’s what we thought it was. It could have been anything: there was barely a wall left standing. The next morning, we started walking again. We had a few close calls getting past the borders, but nothing really untoward. We were following the line of an old Roman road for most of the time. Not one that had survived and been rebuilt to take modern traffic: that would have been far too risky. This one had become little more than a dust track used by local farmers and villagers. It had passed by a couple of villages, but now the land was empty. Just empty, as far as the eye could see. We followed the track until it petered out, then just kept going in the same direction. We spotted something odd ahead of us: a shape in the ground, like a dark circle. Cal thought it might be an old well, so we headed for it. When we got there, we saw there were two dark circles, each at either end of a depression in the ground. What was really odd was that another depression cut across the first at right angles, about halfway along. We walked the length of it. It was twice as long in one direction as it was in the other. If you were to draw the two depressions, with the circles in place, it would look like a cross. The cross of Christ, actually, with the circles at the points where his hands would have been nailed.”

Nikko let out a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding. “So, what? You think there had been a cross there?”

“No, no,” Juliet shook her head. “No, it was too big for that. Way too big. I mean we’re talking cathedral size here, Nikko. A big, Gothic style cathedral like the ones in Europe. But the great Gothic cathedrals weren’t built until over a thousand years after the time of Christ.”

“Around about the time of the crusades, though, right?”

Juliet nodded, part of her still pleased when her ex-pupil spotted exactly what she had been hinting at.

“We stopped to investigate, obviously,” Juliet continued. “If the Templars or anyone else had built a cathedral on the site, then there should surely be some sort of sign of it further down if not above the topsoil. I took one of the corners at the join of the two depressions. Cal started work on one of the dark circles. We’d been digging half a day when it happened.”

“What?” Nikko cut in, enthralled.

“The entire circle Cal was working on caved. I looked up just in time to see him disappear down into the hole. Luckily he’d left his pack with mine in the centre of the two depressions, so I could use both our ropes if I had to and we hadn’t lost anything. I lowered a rope down to him and called out. I couldn’t see how far he’d fallen and he didn’t answer me at first, so I was starting to panic when he finally shouted back. He said he was okay, but he couldn’t move, which isn’t exactly my definition of okay, but this is Cal we’re talking about here. I lowered the packs down first, then myself. I was lucky the rope held: there wasn’t much up there for me to tie it on to. I found Cal on top of the rubble that had fallen with him. I’d expected him to be trapped, but no: he just literally couldn’t move. Again: not my definition of okay!” Juliet’s features hardened angrily. “I checked him over. There were no obvious breaks. He had a bad cut on his head, with a lump forming under it, where he had hit it on landing. It was nowhere near as bad as it should have been though. There was no obvious nerve impairment to his hands and feet: he could feel with them okay, he just couldn’t move them. Then I asked him if there was anything else I should know, medically that is. And that’s when he decided to drop the next little bombshell on me.”

“Why, what was wrong?” Nikko asked, frowning.

“Oh nothing, nothing at all. He had no pain, no dizziness, no nausea. He was absolutely fine apart from the two small facts that he couldn’t move a muscle and was totally blind!”

“Cal went blind?” Nikko’s voice went up an octave.

“Probably thanks to the bump on his head,” Juliet shrugged, “but that’s not what he’ll claim caused it.”

“Why, what does he think?”

Juliet turned and looked directly at Nikko. “He said that, as he fell, he saw a bright light all around him. In the light, he heard a voice. He wouldn’t tell me then what the voice said, and he never has since. He said it wasn’t my voice, though: it was definitely male. There was nobody else around, Nikko, and I didn’t see any bright lights. What’s even weirder is how long the blindness lasted.”

“Just the blindness?”

“Yes, the paralysis wore off after about half an hour. The blindness took three whole days. To the exact minute!”

“That is a little weird,” said Nikko, frowning.

“Tell me about it,” Juliet sighed. “It’s exactly the same length of time that Saint Paul is reputed to have gone blind for after seeing a bright heavenly light and hearing a voice that nobody else heard, during his famous conversion on the road to...”

“Damascus,” Nikko finished when Juliet left the sentence hanging. “You don’t think you were in the exact same spot, do you?”

“It sure would give the Templars a reason to build a cathedral over it!” Juliet shrugged.


	6. "You don't love him."

Nikko was trying to hack into his Dad’s computer when Cal stuck his head round the side of the study door.

“Give up, junior: I re-encrypted it for him,” Cal drawled lazily. “Have you seen Juliet around today?”

“She was in her lab last I saw,” Nikko answered, ignoring the suggestion that he ‘give up’ his attempt on the computer. “Shouldn’t you still be on crutches or something?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get back to ‘em. There’s just something I have to do first.”

Nikko glanced up with a raised eyebrow, but Cal had already turned away.

Juliet wasn’t in her lab. Nor was she in her rooms: Cal had tried both of those obvious choices before even considering Doctor Zond’s office. He had also tried the kitchens, the main lab, Maggie’s lab and the library. That only left a few possibilities. At least finding Nikko had confirmed that she was actually in the building somewhere.

He wandered through the artefact stores, checking darkened corners in case she had spotted him and decided to avoid him. Not that she was without cause: he’d hardly been that eager to find her himself until this morning. It wasn’t that he’d suddenly undergone any great change of heart on the matter. He still felt exactly the same as he had six months ago, closer to seven now really. He knew even just seeing her was going to be painful, but this wasn’t something he could let pass by. She had to know.

Eventually he tracked her down. She was in the basement, in the archives, engrossed in some old case files. He slowed his steps, walking so quietly that he was right behind her before she noticed his presence.

The shock and guilt on her face as she turned round to see who was there couldn’t have been meant for him, Cal reasoned, so she must have been looking at something the others weren’t aware of. She soon recovered, however, and a look of annoyance and irritation flooded across her features instead.

“Out of my way, Cal,” said Juliet, trying to step around her colleague.

“Not this time,” Cal replied, blocking her way with an arm firmly fixed to the shelving unit on either side of her. “You need to hear this, and for once, and I really mean this Juliet, for once this has nothing to do with you and me and what happened in Syria.”

****

Juliet swallowed visibly. Her back was to the shelving unit and she really wanted to run right now. Not because Cal was scaring her: he wasn’t. If there was anyone in the room she didn’t trust, it was herself.

“Hear what?” Juliet snapped, looking away impatiently. “This had better be important!”

“I overheard a conversation this morning,” Cal sighed. “I heard a voice I recognised, so I listened in. Rude of me, I know, but considering what I heard I think I’ve been justified on that point.”

“Well?” Juliet folded her arms, for want of somewhere to put her hands, and leant back against the shelves. It was the unit that backed onto the wall of the basement, so she could press herself back against it as far as she could without worrying about toppling in.

Cal took a breath and winced. She wasn’t going to make this easy for him, but then who would in her position?

“It was Anthony,” he said, and caught the glance Juliet flashed towards him. “He was talking to somebody, on a cellphone. He didn’t see me. He had his back towards me. I figured he’d just been walking you to work.”

“He probably had,” said Juliet warily.

“I don’t know who he was talking to, he didn’t mention any names. I didn’t catch anything that came through the cellphone either. All I heard was ‘Stop worrying. Everything’s fine. She doesn’t suspect anything.’ Then there was a pause. Presumably the person on the other end wasn’t inclined to stop worrying because the next thing he said was ‘So what if it takes a little longer than planned! These things are never set in stone. I’m getting more access to the building every day. All I need is another week, maybe two, and we’ll have what we want.’ Then there was another pause and he hung up. Or rather, I’m guessing, whoever he’s working for hung up on him.”

“You don’t know that has anything to do with me, Cal,” Juliet snapped, meeting his eyes fully for the first time in their conversation. “That conversation could have been about anything! Anthony works in the real estate business: it could have been any one of a number of buildings he was talking about. Any one of a number of female rivals or difficult clients that ‘doesn’t suspect anything’! You have absolutely no evidence that he was talking about me or here or anything to do with Veritas! And you have absolutely no right to spy on him like that!”

“When did you get so blind, Juliet!” Cal snapped. “Stop making excuses for the man! He’s not worth it! And don’t try to tell me that he is, or that you love him anyway, because I know that’s not true!”

“Don’t tell me what I feel, Cal!” Juliet’s voice rose angrily. “You don’t have a clue what I feel!”

“Oh, really? You think?” Cal’s eyebrows rose. “Tell me then. Convince me that you love this guy and that he is totally on the level and deserves you and I will walk away, right now, and never mention this again. Convince me that there is no good reason why you can’t even bear to look at me unless you’re yelling at me. That you are perfectly at ease in my company. That you’re not uncomfortable with me this close.” He let his arms bend slightly to bring him closer to her, and immediately Juliet’s arms uncrossed themselves, her hands wavering in the space between them, ready to push him away but not quite able to bring herself to make contact. Cal bent his head down next to her ear. “Tell me your heart isn’t beating faster right now because of me.”

“Cal, don’t do this,” Juliet hissed. “I’m with Anthony now.”

“You don’t love him,” Cal breathed into her ear.

“He loves me,” Juliet replied, deflecting the telling statement.

“I love you.”

Juliet’s breath caught. There was no reply to that. What her heart wanted to say, her head wouldn’t let her. What her head wanted to say, her heart wouldn’t allow either. She swallowed again. He was so close now she could feel the warmth of his body surrounding her. It was a familiar warmth. Part of her was sure that if she closed her eyes and let herself feel comfortable in that warmth, they could turn back the clock and wake up in that underground maze in Syria, before everything had started to go wrong.

But everything had gone wrong, and clocks could not be turned backwards. She felt her fingertips graze his shirt and took a breath.

“Cal, please: let me go,” Juliet whispered, her voice pained and stretched. “I’ll talk to Anthony. I’ll see what I can find out. Just let me go, please!”

Calvin backed off in silence, his hands in the air and his eyes on the floor. His cheeks were flushed, just like they had been that day he had caught her on her descent from the jet. He walked away without another word. This time she was sure her own face was burning too.


	7. "We're fine, Professor, honestly!"

“Hey, Tony, you looking for Juliet?” Nikko called across the hallway to the man who had just entered.

“We had a lunch date,” the tall dark man supplied with a shrug.

“Well, she’s around somewhere, but I don’t know where,” Nikko breezed. “Cal was looking for her earlier, I know. Dunno if he found her. Haven’t seen either of them since.”

Anthony mumbled a reply with a raised eyebrow and Nikko turned back to what he was doing and carried on in silence. I few minutes later, Juliet stormed past him, purse in hand and cheeks flushed.

“Sorry I’m late,” she muttered to Anthony as she caught his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

Before Nikko could say ‘hello’ the pair were gone. He stared after them in contemplative silence.

“I think I could use those crutches now,” said a voice by his side, startling Nikko out of his reverie. He looked round to see Cal staring at the door, his face dark and unreadable.

“What happened when you fell down that hole in Syria?” Nikko asked outright. “And don’t say nothing, because I am not going to stop until I have worked out exactly what the heck is bugging you two!”

****

_ Six months and three weeks ago: _

_“We’re fine, Professor, honestly!” Juliet was saying. “What we’ve found here is really interesting and might be a huge discovery. I don’t want to say too much just yet, but it could change our understanding of European architecture immensely. We just need to do a few more tests and take a few more readings and sketches, then we’ll be done and back on our way again.”_

_“Okay, well, make sure you let us know if you need anything Juliet,” said Professor Zond’s voice. “And tell Cal to go easy on the local liquor!”_

_The mechanically rendered voice shut off and the darkness descended once more._

_“Did you have to tell him I was hung over?” Cal asked wearily._

_“Your other suggestion was that I tell him you’d gone off to look at stuff on your own,” said Juliet matter-of-factly. “If I’d told the professor that, you know as well as I do that he’d be back on the jet and flying out here himself. This way, he believes me, he’s not worried about either of us and our delay is explained.”_

_“Could you try and sound a little less like I actually had a hangover?” Cal asked, pushing himself into a seated position with his back to the wall of their current abode. A breath of air against his cheek told him that Juliet had been close and he shot an arm out on the off chance. His arm connected and he pulled her in beside him. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly. “I got the ability to move back, I’m sure the ability to see will follow.”_

_“It’s been two and a half days, Cal,” said Juliet, her breath warming his neck and left ear. “You were able to move again within a half hour. What if...”_

_“Don’t!” Cal’s voice was sharp. Sharper than it needed to be. “We have to assume that whatever caused the paralysis also caused the blindness. If the former has gone, the latter should follow, it just takes time! Don’t freak out on me now, Juliet!”_

_A light touch traced the line of his jaw, turning his head to the left, and he felt Juliet’s forehead touch his own and rest there._

_“I’ll be here,” she said. “No matter what.”_

_****_

“So you were blind and could hardly move,” said Nikko with a shrug. “So what? Juliet told me that much herself: the paralysis lasted half an hour and the blindness lasted three days.”

“What else did she tell you?” Cal asked, easing himself into a chair and frowning up at Nikko.

“Not a lot,” Nikko shrugged. “I mean, she told me how you fell down the hole, obviously, and how you both got there and what you thought the place was, but that was as far as we got.”

Nikko sauntered over and sat down in a chair opposite Cal.

“Oh yeah,” he said casually, almost as an afterthought, “and she mentioned something about you seeing bright lights and hearing voices. Care to share?”

The curse Cal bit back was obvious, as was the rising anger behind it. It took a minute or two for him to martial his features and turn back to Nikko. When he did, there was a cold beer by his right hand.

“Where...?”

“Please,” Nikko shrugged. “You don’t think I know my own father well enough to figure out where in his office he hides the beer?”

“Put it down,” Cal nodded at the similar beer in Nikko’s hand. “You may have graduated, but you’re still under twenty one.”

“And in my own home with a responsible adult...”

“Who’s telling you to put the beer away if you want to hear any more of this story.”

Nikko pulled a face and set the beer aside. “A small price to pay, I think.”

“Okay,” Cal paused. “The first thing you have to understand,” he began, “is that I am quite willing to accept all of this as the result of a concussion. Even when my sight did return, three days after the accident itself, the bruising on my head was certainly serious enough to cause one.

The first thing I remember about the fall was this feeling of weightlessness. Time seemed to slow down too: so much that I could see the rubble falling around me, piece by piece. Then I couldn’t see the rubble. All I could see was this bright, white light. I couldn’t feel anything: no pain, no gravity, no tons of rock and dust falling past me, nothing. All I could see was this light. And all I could hear was this voice.”

“What was it like?” Nikko interrupted. “The voice, I mean.”

“I dunno,” Cal shook his head. “It’s hard to describe. I didn’t really hear it, you see. At least, not in the normal way. Not with my ears. It was like it was already in me. In my head. But it wasn’t my voice, you know? Like the voice you feel in your head when you think something to yourself? It wasn’t like that. It was different. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”

Cal was silent for a few moments, staring down at the Persian rug, apparently engrossed in unpicking the intricate design.

“What did it say?” Nikko prompted.

“What?” Cal frowned. “Oh. Yeah. That. It’s weird, but I can’t really remember. It’s like, the more I try to think about it, the harder it gets to actually recall. Sometimes I get flashes. At least, I think they’re flashes. I only seem to get them when I need them, like in Alaska. I knew I’d survive that fall. I don’t know how, but I knew. And the only thing that happened to me hanging there, before I cut the rope, was a flash of that bright white light and some vestige of a barely remembered voice. Then it was gone, and I knew what I had to do, and I knew that I’d survive, so I did it.

What I do remember, about the voice during the fall, was that I didn’t recognise it. I mean not at all, not even slightly. But somehow I trusted it. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever this voice told me was the truth. One hundred percent, absolute. I don’t know how, or why, I knew that, I just did.”

“Can you remember anything about what it said the first time?” Nikko asked, leaning forward in his chair.

“Not in so many words, no,” Cal shrugged. “I remember the light, and the idea of feeling this voice in my head, but nothing about what it actually said. The next thing I remember was cold, pain and Juliet’s voice shouting my name from somewhere above me. The weird thing was I knew, as soon as I heard her and without any doubt whatsoever, that I was in love with her. Completely, devotedly and utterly. She was the one for me, and I was the one for her. And I knew, just as surely, that it would all work out.”

“Hasn’t done so yet,” Nikko raised an eyebrow.

“I didn’t know when it would work out, just that it would,” said Cal patiently. “I know: it sounds crazy. You think I’m crazy, I think I’m crazy, she thinks I’m crazy...”

“Wait, you told Juliet this?” Nikko’s voice went up about an octave.

“Yeah, okay, maybe not the best tactic in the world, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight at the time.”

“And that makes it so much better...”

“Nevertheless, she knows, and now you know, and so far that’s it. Nobody else needs to know about this Nikko. Your father has way too much on his plate with the Alaskan artefact to be worrying about whether or not I’m becoming stalker material.”

“Man, you can’t be sure of that...”

“I am. We have enough crazy around here on a normal day without adding my extra helping to the pot. It affects Juliet and me. We both know all the details. Nobody else needs to know them. I wouldn’t even be telling you if she hadn’t already given you half the story.”

“So that’s it?” Both Nikko’s eyebrows rose this time. “Juliet’s given me her half and now you’ve given me yours? Then how come it doesn’t feel like even a fraction of the whole story?”

Cal opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by the sound of a door slamming. It was the main door. Heels clicked past the now closed office door. Juliet was back from her lunch date. Cal rose stiffly to his feet and put out a hand to steady himself.

“Addition of beer or lack of crutches?” Nikko grinned.

“The latter,” Cal growled. “Excuse me while I go find them.”

Nikko watched him go, then picked up his unopened beer and replaced it in the mini-fridge masquerading as a wooden wall panel. He sat back in his father’s office chair and thought over the two competing stories. Cal seemed to be claiming that the flash of light was the first he had known about his feelings for Juliet. Juliet seemed to be hinting that there had been something there from much earlier. Cal claimed he had told Juliet everything, at least everything he had told Nikko, as far as what had happened in Syria was concerned, maybe more. Juliet, however, despite her obvious feelings for him, had chosen Tony. And she had been with Tony how long? She had said six months at her graduation ceremony. That was a month ago now. And the trip to the Holy Land was when? Not quite seven months ago. So she had already been seeing Tony before everything happened with Cal? Only about a week, though, if that. If something had changed between her and Cal on the trip, surely it would have been easy enough to tell Tony that she didn’t want to see him any more?

Something niggled at the back of Nikko’s mind. Something wasn’t quite right. Not about Cal, but maybe about Juliet, and definitely about Tony. Before his thoughts could untangle any further, the office door opened and Vincent was propelling him out of the room, both verbally and physically, towards the training area.


	8. "I'm not exactly going anywhere."

Juliet sat curled up in the corner of a window overlooking the busy street below the Veritas buildings. The lunch with Anthony hadn’t gone well had she had resorted to burying herself in her work to avoid questions. It had worked so far, but there was still one person she was finding it hard to hide from: herself. Her hands rested on a notepad filled with scribbled and half-deciphered symbols. Her head rested on the cool glass of the window. Her mind was far from either. Instead of focussing on the text she had been working on for months, Juliet’s eyes were closed, picturing once again the dark, dusty catacombs of Syria.

****

_ Day One - Just after the fall _

_“I’m coming down, Cal, just wait there,” Juliet called, having checked the knots she had tied around the surface rubble at least seven times. The packs were already down, so was the other rope: there was only herself left to go._

_“I’m not exactly going anywhere,” Cal’s voice called back up. She could hear the grin in it._

_She had taken her time and made sure not to scream when something, probably a piece of loose topsoil and not at all a bat, brushed past her about half way down. She had even made it to floor level without more than a few impatient queries from Cal. She took her time climbing up the heap of rubble, not wanting to cause a slip that might land them both in even more trouble. It wasn’t terribly high, but Cal was on the top of it so if it moved, he moved, and, if he couldn’t move as he was, with nothing pinning him down, moving him might make the problem worse. Much worse._

_“Okay, I’m here,” Juliet tried to keep the panic out of her voice as she reached Cal’s side. “Please tell me you’re in pain?”_

_“Remind me to sign you up for those bedside manner classes when we get home!” Cal retorted, his body motionless, his eyes staring blankly upwards._

_“You know what I mean,” Juliet snapped, trickling water onto a cotton swab and wiping the blood and grime from his forehead. She followed up with an antiseptic wipe and felt no need to hide the smirk when Cal grimaced at the stinging pain._

_“I haven’t broken my back, my neck or, as far as I can tell, anything else,” he informed her through gritted teeth. “I may have cracked a rib or two and I have a heck of a lot of bruises on my back, maybe a few scrapes, but that’s it. Nothing serious.”_

_“Nothing except an open head injury, possible internal bleeding, blindness and complete paralysis!” Juliet replied, checking him over for broken bones nonetheless. Her hands ran over his limbs automatically, following the thread of scapula and clavicle, humerus, radius and ulna, then tibia and fibula, up to the femur and back down again on the other side. It wasn’t until she was halfway up the far arm that the memory of those arms around her at the plane kicked in. She hesitated, banishing the memory from her mind, then moved on. When she got to his ribs, she eased up a bit, running her fingers lightly over the possible damage. Two maybe three ribs were probably cracked, eliciting a hiss of pain from her patient as she found them, others were only bruised._

_“You need these seen to,” she murmured. “Your back probably needs looking at too.”_

_“Leave it: you can’t do anything to help until I can move again, but I can’t do anything to make it worse either.”_

_“I can’t just leave you here: it’ll be dark soon. If we don’t get under cover and insulated, we’ll have hypothermia by morning.”_

_“I’m not saying leave me here all night,” Cal’s voice rose slightly. “Just give me some time - ten minutes, twenty, whatever - and then we’ll see if anything’s changed. Seriously, Juliet, there’s nothing more you can do here right now. You said it yourself: it’ll be dark soon and we need to have our camping gear ready. Go sort that out first, then come back to me. It’ll take you twice as long to set it up alone anyway!”_

_She had set up camp in a corner as far from the pile of rubble as she could find. Carved columns on either side of the camp and in front of it, opposite the corner itself, marked out a small square she hoped was safe from further cave-ins. It did take her longer without Cal’s help, and by the time she made her way back up the rubble the light was growing dim. She sat down by his side, legs curled under her and her weight supported by her hand._

_“Any change?”_

_“Little bit,” Cal replied._

_Juliet jumped when the hand next to her legs moved outward and hit her. Her breath caught, and she froze as it followed the line of her legs up to her hip. She swallowed and forced her mind to stop flying back to that moment at the airstrip. The feeling of strong, safe arms encircling her dissipated. When Cal’s hand reached her waist, she shook her head, cleared her throat and caught the hand in her own._

_“You okay?” Cal frowned blindly upward._

_“Think you can sit up?” Juliet asked, deflecting the question. “I take it you still can’t see?”_

_“Still blind,” he confirmed. “Give me a hand and we’ll try sitting up though.”_

_It had taken another hour to get Cal down from the rubble heap and into the tent. Every step seemed to put pressure on a different cracked rib. Eventually he was sitting under the glow of a lantern, the torn remains of his shirt removed and discarded._

_“How bad is it?” Cal asked, wincing as Juliet cleaned another cut on his back._

_“You’ll live,” she replied. “At least as long as any of these cuts don’t get infected.”_

_“And as long as we find more water to replace what it’s taken to clean me up!” Cal retorted. “How much do we have left?”_

_“Enough for now,” Juliet murmured, trying to focus on the task at hand. It hadn’t been easy. Ever since that moment when she fell down the steps at the airstrip, the smallest thing seemed able to take her back there. The deep, dark pools of his eyes: eyes she could easily lose herself in. The gentleness of his voice. The unexpected strength in his arms. Why hadn’t she expected that? Because he was an archaeologist? Because he was clever? Wasn’t that just holding to a stereotype? Sure, he had started college way before she had, and had earned the title of doctor, which he never used, way before she had, but hadn’t he also been at the top of Professor Zond’s list when they went to Antarctica? Okay, maybe Vincent might have been above him overall, but it hadn’t been Vincent the professor had taken with him to teach his son how to climb. Suddenly the muscles in Cal’s arms and back seemed almost too obvious to Juliet and she wondered how on Earth she hadn’t noticed it before. Unfortunately, trying to ignore the play of light on the muscles of the man you’ve suddenly found yourself attracted to and now find yourself having to pay exact, albeit medical, attention to is not exactly easy, and for once Juliet was incredibly glad Cal couldn’t see her face._

****

“Juliet?” Maggie’s voice broke in on Juliet’s daydream, startling her. “Juliet!” She could feel her cheeks burning.

“Huh? Maggie?” Juliet looked around. Maggie was standing, arms crossed, looking down at her.

“Daydreaming about lover-boy, huh?” Maggie asked raising an eyebrow. “And you only just saw him at lunch too. My, what it is to be young and in love!”

“Huh?” Juliet frowned, momentarily confused, then remembered her lunch date with Anthony. And the fact that she was supposed to be in love with Anthony. Anthony. Not Cal. “Yeah, right, of course,” she muttered, pushing herself up out of the window alcove. “Was there something?”

“Solomon’s called a meeting,” Maggie told her, trying to hide a poorly suppressed smile and sound stern. “Wants us all in the main lab to go through the Alaskan finds. I get the feeling he’s in a mood to start dishing out duties and, if we’re late, we’ll get the most tedious ones: so get a wriggle on.”

The two women made their way through to the main lab. The men, and Nikko, whom Juliet still couldn’t think of as anything other than a boy, except perhaps a health hazard, were all there. Professor Zond stood at the far end of the table, on which all the finds from Alaska were now spread out. Vincent, as always, hovered nearby murmuring quietly in the professor’s ear as they perused a map that lay in front of them. Nikko leant nonchalantly against a bookcase, eating. Cal sat by the table, his crutches visible behind him. For a second Juliet let her gaze rest on him, taking in the dark eyes focused downwards, the dark hair curling gently about his ears, the pensive gaze as he turned over one of the artefacts in his hands. Juliet followed his gaze. The artefact was one she had never seen before: a rectangular box about the size of a deep pencil case or a long jewellery box. The hands turning the artefact over and over stopped suddenly. Juliet looked up to find Cal watching her with much the same expression as he had the artefact. Their gaze met for just a second before she looked away and cleared her throat. Out of the corner of her eye she caught the ghost of a smile flicker across Cal’s face.

“Okay folks, now that we’re all here,” Professor Zond began. “There’s a lot to analyse, so I’m going to split the tasks by type here. Maggie and I will take chemical analysis. We’ll start with the eye of Horus and work our way through the collection of artefacts that way. Juliet and Cal: you’re our language experts so you take the lead on translation. You can start with that box and, while you’re at it, see if it opens at all. Vincent and Nikko: you’re on recording and dry research. I want photographs, sketches and 3D HD imaging of everything we’ve found; and anything we turn up in the course of our research, you find out about, whether it’s ancient tongues or the changing stratigraphy of the planet. Are we clear?”

A varied chorus of assents echoed around the room. People started moving off with artefacts to study, copy or test. Finally the only people remaining at the table were Juliet and Cal. Juliet’s eyes remained stolidly fixed on the box in his hands.

“You okay?” Cal asked.


	9. "What am I? A Labrador?

_ Day 2 - The morning after the fall _

_Juliet woke as the first light of dawn began to creep over the edge of the gaping hole in the ceiling and filtered into the tent. It took her a moment to register where she was: lying on a stone floor with her head on Cal’s shoulder and one hand resting on his chest. The clear sky last night had foretold a temperature drop to be wary of, and there had only been space for one tent in their little corner, so it had been decided they would share. She had been sure she wouldn’t sleep, lying on her side in her sleeping bag at the farthest edge of the small tent, but he had thrown out an arm and pulled her close. It wasn’t that he made her uncomfortable. If anything, she was too comfortable. Even now, with the light outside the tent growing gradually brighter, she just didn’t want to move. She could feel his chest rise and fall steadily below her hand, his heartbeat slow and equally steady. He was still asleep._

_Juliet disentangled herself from Cal’s arms and sat up, looking down at her recumbent patient and friend. How he could sleep with the wounds on his back was beyond her, but he had refused morphine and had settled down on the hard stone floor without much complaint. She had felt his breathing settle into the even rhythm of sleep long before her own. Her mind had been too busy going over the days events. Her body had been complaining about the discomfort of the makeshift bed. More than that though: she had been trying, trying so hard, not to feel comfortable lying next to Cal._

_It shouldn’t bother her. They had shared a tent before in similar circumstances. They would probably share one again, more than once, before either of them left Veritas. It was that kind of job: your colleagues became your friends, your best friends, and you shared everything with them. Why? Because these were the people you trusted with your life. Because these were the only people who understood everything, every single thing, about what you did every day. Because these were the only people who truly inhabited your world._

_Really?_

_But Anthony was part of her world now too, wasn’t he?_

_Maybe she couldn’t talk to him about everything she did at work, but that was normal wasn’t it? Nobody went home at night and told their partner everything they’d done all day. Most people probably didn’t even talk about work when they got home. Anthony never did. Not unless she pressed him about it, anyway._

_The rising sun cast its first warm rays across Cal’s face. For a moment he was like a serene statue warmed by the glow of sunlight through high church windows, then his eyes scrunched up against the light and heat and the moment had passed. His arm cast out to the side, looking for her._

_“Juliet?” Cal’s voice sounded distant._

****

“Juliet!” Cal’s voice was beside her now, snapping Juliet out of her reverie. That had been happening too much lately, she thought.

“What?” Juliet snapped back, hearing the irritation in her own voice and immediately berating herself for it.

“Scanner!”

She passed him the mobile scanner and clicked the icon on the computer desktop that ran the item’s software.

“Ready,” she called as the program pinged at the end of its loading.

Laser sharp images appeared on the screen as Cal passed the scanner over the wooden box. The HD upgrade had been worth the money their generous benefactor had paid. The computer pinged as the image screen saved and closed. Another window opened as Cal began scanning the second side of the box. It took time to set up and adjust the light boxes, and the items all had to be scanned slowly, but there was no argument that the picture quality was much better, even picking up things that there was no way anyone would have spotted with the naked eye. Juliet watched the image on the screen slide slowly by, glad of the necessity for someone to watch the screen as someone else handled the scanner. The carvings on the box were interesting: detailed and intricate, yet incredibly old. How old exactly was unknown, and would remain so until they could send a sample down to Maggie for carbon dating and other chemical analyses.

The computer pinged as Cal moved on to another side. Juliet watched as the scanner moved over what was now the base of the box. Plain grained wood slid past at high resolution and higher definition. Juliet blinked. Surely that wasn’t a natural knot in the wood? Her head jutted forward, following the pattern across the screen until it disappeared. She stared at the side of the screen where the pattern had vanished from sight. Eventually, the computer pinged and another picture began to fill the monitor. Juliet grabbed the mouse and pulled up the program history, clicking on the item it had just completed and dragging the newly opened file to the right spot.

To the naked eye, it would look just like an ordinary knot in a piece of timber. Small, but ordinary nonetheless. Under high definition, other lines could be seen. Someone, someone with a skill beyond modern ideas of talented, had painted the base of the box. Not just painted it, but painted over it. And they had painted the exact pattern of the wood grain. The exact pattern, right on top of the pattern itself! The colours, the lines: everything matched perfectly! Everything! Until you reached the knot!

As Juliet examined the knot in greater detail, she could see the lines of the wood grain continuing towards the elliptical spot. They continued as if there was nothing there! The paintwork on top matched the wood grain perfectly, until the point where the paintwork slid out to bend, perfectly naturally, around the darker ovoid, and the wood grain did not.

The knot was false. It was well hidden, but it was definitely false.

The computer pinged as Cal completed the fourth side of the box. It took him considerably less time to scan the two ends, then he made his way over to the computer with the scanner.

“Done,” he said, placing the scanner in its holder. “This can go down to the boy wonder and Vincent.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Juliet grinned, sliding out of her computer chair and ducking under Cal’s arm to reach the box. She deftly turned the box over, found the tiny knot and flipped the box right side up again. “Watch!”

The top of the box didn’t slide dramatically outwards or spring suddenly upwards like a jack-in-the-box. Instead, there was an almost inaudible click and a thin crack appeared all around the midline of the sides of the box.

“Should we?” Juliet breathed. “Professor Zond...”

“He asked us to find out if it opened, not if it started showing signs of breaking down,” Cal cut in. “Let’s find out if it opens right up before we start breaking out the champagne.”

Juliet placed the box back down on the light rich surface they’d used for scanning. Gently, she edged the top half of the box upward. It slid up easily, revealing tall internal edges almost as high as its external ones. When the top of the box finally came loose, Juliet lifted it away and placed it reverently down on one side. There was a tablet in the box. The top half protruded from an ancient padding of velvet. It looked intact. Cal’s hand snaked out towards it. Juliet slapped it away.

“It’s open. Go fetch the professor,” she commanded.

“Go fetch?” Cal complained, moving away anyway. “What am I? A Labrador?”

As his footsteps left the room, Juliet crouched down, bringing her eyes to the level of the box. There were markings on the internal edges. She looked into the box, her eyes scanning the visible part of the tablet. There were markings on the tablet too. Both sets of markings were clearly forms of writing, but they were just as clearly different. The markings on the inside of the box looked like runes, probably Norse. The markings on the tablet, though clearer, looked older. They were sets of lines. Much simpler and more primitive even than the angular runes.

“Found something interesting?”

Juliet jumped up and spun around, instinctively blocking the box from view with her body.

“Anthony? What are you doing here?” Juliet hissed.

“I had a gap in my schedule,” Tony shrugged smoothly, his eyes scanning the walls and contents of the room lazily, almost as if he was bored. They came back to rest on Juliet. “Can’t a guy visit his girl at work if he feels like it?”

“You shouldn’t be in here, Anthony,” Juliet sought for a reason to back her up. “These labs, the equipment; it’s all state of the art. It’s so sensitive to any contaminants or knocks... And the artefacts! We have to be so careful with these old parchments!”

“I won’t touch anything!” Tony held up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll be on my best behaviour, I promise!”

“How exactly did you get in here?” Juliet frowned, closing the reflective light boxes around the wooden box and tablet as she watched her boyfriend sidle into the room, hands in pockets and eyes scanning everything. She had the uncomfortable feeling that she knew that look: it was the one Vincent got whenever he was casing somewhere.

“I’d like to know that too,” said Professor Zond from the doorway, Maggie and Cal behind him. “My head of security is on his way here as we speak,” he continued. “I’m sure he’d love to hear all the details!”

Anthony smiled brightly. Too brightly, thought Juliet.

“Just dropping by, saw the door was open and thought I’d surprise Juliet,” said Tony, oozing charm. “No offense meant. Sorry if I broke the rules.”

“You’ll know better in future,” Solomon replied, stepping aside to make way for their unexpected guest just as Nikko and Vincent joined them. “Please allow Vincent to escort you out. We wouldn’t want you to lose your way: this building can be quite confusing when you’ve never been in it before.”

“Leaving so soon, Tony?” Nikko grinned. “And we never even had time to chat!”

Nikko continued grinning as he watched Vincent propel Tony towards the exit. As they rounded the first corner and moved out of sight he began to chortle then winced as a hand connected with his head.

“What? Seriously!” Nikko fumed at the trio behind him. His father raised an eyebrow and turned, leading them into the lab.

“What have we got?” Solomon asked, indicating the closed reflectors behind Juliet.

“Professor, I am so sorry about...”

“Don’t worry about it,” he interrupted Juliet’s apology with a wave. “Vincent has been looking for an excuse to overhaul the security measures in here ever since the new computer system arrived. I think he’s jealous of all our new toys. Cal said you opened the box?”

Juliet stepped aside and moved the light reflector boxes out of the way. The edge of the tablet was visible over the side of the open box. Professor Zond picked up the scanner and passed it to Juliet.

“Let’s get it recorded _in situ_ , then we can start getting it out of there,” he ordered. “This is the next link in the chain.”


	10. “No need to swear, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“What do you think?” Maggie murmured, collecting a minute sample of dust from the surface of the amorphous stone tablet. “Ogham? Some Incan variation on a quipu?”

“It’s neither of those,” Solomon sighed, leaning over the tablet and staring at it as if his eyes could bore right through it and find the hidden truth within. “There are no knot markings. You can’t have a quipu without knots. And some of these symbols have too many lines to be Ogham. Most of them in fact.”

“It’s futhark,” Cal called from the computer. He had taken his turn at the viewing while Juliet, with her smaller fingers, scanned the inside of the box.

“No need to swear, I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” grinned Nikko, sitting by the bookcase and passing a stress ball from hand to hand.

Cal rolled his eyes. “Second shelf, five from the right,” he droned, pointing and watching as Nikko retrieved a weighty tome declaring itself to be a study of pre-Christian European writing systems.

“Futhark, futhark...” Nikko thumbed through the index, then through the pages. “Runic alphabets. Various forms. No surviving examples from before third century AD. Presence of the ‘a’ ‘e’ rune, and study of proto-Germanic languages, suggests it originated in the first century before Christ.” Nikko looked up. “That narrows it down a bit, but there’s still a bunch of different runes it could be, and it doesn’t help us at all with the tally marks!”

“There a picture in there?” Cal rubbed a hand across his forehead. “Should be just over the page from the start of the chapter. Bring it over.”

Nikko turned the page, found the picture and shrugged. Nevertheless he got to his feet and deposited the book carefully onto the table. The computer pinged and Cal and Juliet joined the other three. Cal was holding a print of one inner wall of the box.

“Okay, so ‘futhark’ basically is to runes what ‘alphabet’ is to Greek letters,” Cal began, pointing at the top line of runes on the page. “Only instead of reading the first two symbols for the name - alpha, beta - you read the first six.” He pointed out each symbol in turn. “They read ‘f’, ‘u’, ‘th’, ‘a’, ‘r’, ‘k’.”

“The sound we would write as ‘t’ ‘h’ today was one letter to them, the thorn,” Juliet provided from the other side of the table.

“Now a lot of the runes don’t change much,” Cal continued, “but this one here,” he pointed to a pair of lines like opposing arrowheads clearly visible on the printed image, “it’s only found in the oldest kind.”

“And when all the runes were written together,” said Juliet, half to herself, “they were written in three lines of eight called aettir. Every letter in the same place...”

“Allowing them to also write in a coded form...” Cal continued.

“Just like the one on the tablet!” Juliet finished. “They’re both written in futhark!”

“Why bother, if you’re going to go scribbling the cipher on the walls of the box anyway?” Nikko shrugged.

“Who knows: in case they were separated perhaps?” Maggie supplied.

“Isn’t that like asking why write a note in a standard substitution cipher when everyone that might read it speaks English?” Solomon looked over at his son. “You have to know that it actually is a code before you can try to decode it. The fact that we know the cipher used is simply a matter of a couple of thousand years worth of research.”

“But we can translate it?” Nikko asked, just, his raised hands seemed to say, for clarification.

“We’ll have to translate it more than once to get it back to plain English,” said Cal, “but yes: we can translate it. Juliet can start working on converting the runes to our alphabet while I convert the ‘tally marks’ to runes and then to letters. Once we’ve got them readable, though, we’ll still have to translate them to English and I don’t think this is going to be a language I’m fluent in!”

“Just work out what dialect we’ve got and I’ll find us a friendly expert,” said the professor, placing a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “Keep me posted.”

Nikko watched his father stride away, heading back to his lab and his own projects no doubt. Maggie was with him, the sampling equipment and the precious samples it had collected in the case she carried.

“These runes,” he said, pointing at the picture in Cal’s hand. “Where are they from?”

“Northern Europe,” said Juliet. “They probably started around the Germany area and radiated outward as people spread out.”

“They’re most commonly associated with the Norse peoples,” said Cal, “but that covers all the Scandinavian countries. Each one developed their own ‘dialect’ of runes. It’s the same with the Anglo-Saxons. The original, elder futhark runes only contained twenty four symbols. By the time the Anglo-Saxons were through with it, it contained thirty three!”

“And these are the original runes?” Nikko asked.

“They certainly seem to be,” Cal shrugged. “We’ll only be sure once we get them fully translated.”

“And that’ll happen much faster without distractions!” Juliet raised an eyebrow at Nikko in a hint that it was time to leave.

“So, I guess Tony won’t be dropping by any time soon, then?” Nikko shot back, his face betraying his attempt not to smirk. He was rewarded with a roll of the eyes as his ex-tutor turned her back on him without a word.

“Anybody ever tell you how much you resemble a murder weapon, genius?” Cal frowned.

“Like a top of the range hunting rifle, because I’m right on target!” Nikko smirked, there was no point trying to hide it now.

“I was thinking more a blunt instrument!” Cal waved a hand at the doorway. “Go be useful.”

“I’m being useful here!” Nikko complained, although his tone was light and he was already halfway to the door before the reference book left Cal’s hand.

****

“Stop worrying!” Tony hissed into his cellphone. “They might be able to change a few things, but they can’t overhaul their entire security system in two days! By that time we’ll be ready and it’ll be too late!”

There was a pause while the person on the other end of the phone spoke. Tony’s fist was balled up so tightly that his knuckles were white and his well-manicured fingernails cutting into his palm.

“I know that. Do you really think I’d leave anything like that to chance. You know my reputation!”

Another pause. This one longer. Tony opened his mouth to cut in a few times, but never quite made it past the first syllable. Finally there was silence. Tony pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it in disgust. He threw it down into an armchair and turned to punch the wall. A hand caught his arm just before the punch connected.

“I thought you were on top of that,” said a smooth feminine voice. “You should get a punchbag or stress ball or something.”

“I had one,” Tony muttered, rubbing his now open fist. “It got mislaid somewhere today.”

“Careless,” the voice continued. “You’re losing your touch, or at least your...”

“I’m perfectly capable of carrying out the job I have been hired to do and you know it.”

“Maybe,” the voice sniffed. “But nobody is irreplaceable, Anthony.”


	11. "Just something Vincent taught me once."

Maggie sat with her eyes close to the binocular microscope, her attention fully enthralled by the items below her gaze. She didn't hear the lab door slide open. She didn't hear it close. She was completely unaware of the feet that padded softly from one side of the room to the other, only stopping right behind her. When the hand fell on her shoulder, she spun round so fast her elbow connected sharply with the gut of the newcomer.

"A little jumpy are we?" Professor Zond wheezed. "I am getting too old to be sneak attacked by friends and colleagues!"

"Who exactly are you calling sneaky, Solomon Zond?" Maggie retaliated, smiling, and trying not to laugh as the intrepid adventurer dropped into a chair, still groaning.

"You snuck up on me and you deserve everything you got for it!"

"Mea culpa, mea culpa," Solomon surrendered. "I take it there's something of interest down that eyepiece? I got a variety of soil minerals native to quite a few places, from Scotland, to Nova Scotia, to France, to Peru, to China! The list goes on!"

Maggie, who had been watching the professor's free hand describing a zig-zag pattern back and forth across an imaginary globe, picked one word from the crowd.

"What part of France?" she asked, "Was it a wine growing region?"

"Would have been," Solomon nodded, "all the way back to Roman times at least! Why?"

"See for yourself," said Maggie, indicating her recently vacated chair with a flourish.

Solomon seated himself before the microscope like a diligent pupil, and bent his eye to the eyepiece. There was some necessary adjusting of focus, then the careful, quiet, detailed examination of the true scientist.

"That looks to me like some kind of pollen," he said at last. He was rewarded with an affirmative murmur from his colleague. He looked up. "I'm not the expert you are here, but I'm guessing it's grape vine pollen."

"You guess correctly," Maggie nodded, putting the emphasis on the word 'guess'. "I've been studying it for most of the afternoon, comparing it to catalogued modern and historical examples until I have narrowed it down first to it's genus, then to it's species. Closer than that I cannot get, but, if I had to guess, I would say it's at least as old as the box."

"Any particular reason?"

"The sample came from the inside of the box. Under the tablet to be precise. There's more of the pollen on the tablet itself, on both sides. We can't be certain until the radio-isotope data comes back, but we can say that at some point in its history this box was opened in a wine growing region and the tablet was placed inside."

"It may have been removed and replaced for some reason," Solomon mused. "It wouldn't be the first item we've come across to fall into the wrong hands and then be retrieved."

"True," Maggie nodded. "But we've followed leads with a lot fewer clues behind them. The isotope data should give us a rough date and a few hints at location, though, that I'm betting match up with your wine-growing region of Roman occupied France."

****

Vincent was not a small man, but he was deceptively good at hiding in shadows. He had followed Anthony to his apartment, observed him pass by a window on the second floor some three or four times, one hand to his head and visibly talking. Calling in to report his findings, Vincent had mused. He had waited there some hours, but the window had not been approached again. Numerous men and women had approached, entered and left the building by the main door, but they had not included Anthony. Eventually, he had been forced to retire _his_ position in favour of strengthening his employer's. Certain details had already been taken care of before Vincent had even left the Veritas building, but others needed his personal care and attention, not to mention experience, trickery and deviousness.

He had attended to the most pressing of those wants as soon as his arrival at the building allowed. Small details of security that had been breached were already being dealt with and the virtual wall around his charges, human and artefact alike, was being rebuilt and tested. He checked their progress, made some alterations to the computerised section of their defences, then spent the next hour dealing with some of the more solid security traps. It was during this hour that he had passed his training room, stopped, stepped silently backwards, and watched his erstwhile pupil sitting cross-legged in the centre of the room, staring at a stone. For a moment he almost passed by, leaving Nikko to his meditation as silently as he had discovered him. In the split second as he moved to go, he saw something that made him freeze and seriously reconsider his opinion.

He saw the stone move.

****

The room had fallen silent after the departure of a jubilant Professor Zond, an amused Nikko, a thoughtful Maggie and, of course, the silent force of intimidation that was Vincent, shepherding Anthony before him. The former three had remained a little while after the departure of their unwelcome guest, listening to theories as they unfolded, and taking samples for various machines and microscopes, but now that the room contained just two people, it seemed so much smaller. In reality, the lab was easily big enough for all six of them to work on different projects without bumping into each other. Now it seemed too small for the two of them to even walk to the central table without crossing paths or bumping into one another. They had settled at either side of the table, each with a printed copy of the inscriptions, each with a stack of books beside them, and a shared pile in the middle. The box and its contents, now closed again and sealed in a controlled environment chamber, looked down on them from its position on a shelf. Had it eyes, it might have observed the occasional clash of sentences, as both began at the same moment, the occasional crashing of fingertips, as both reached for the same book from the central pile, but never the accidental meeting of eyes, for all the want of trying!

Cal's gaze came up again from the printed page and rested on Juliet's bent head. His eyes were soft, his brow wrinkled and his face filled with regret. He blamed himself for their falling out as much now as he had at the time. He had moved too fast, presumed too much, and forgotten that feature of Juliet's personality that had put a necessary wall between them: her honesty.

They had been in the crypt, for such it had turned out to be, for five days. His sight had returned, his wounds were healing, and they had explored enough of the underground maze of tunnels and chambers to find a source of clean, fresh water, and some fascinating frescos. They had spent a day photographing and cataloguing the intricately painted walls. Time and damp had done some damage, but in the places where the pictures were still clear, they looked as if they could have been painted weeks ago, not centuries. They had agreed upon a date somewhere in the thirteenth century. The representations of Templar characters among the saints and angels displayed was some modicum of proof.

They had followed the labyrinthine tunnels to a vaulted chamber, lower, smaller and better preserved than the one they had left. Gilt vines spiralled around the columns and up to the capitols, glittering wearily in the torch light. The capitols themselves sported gilt leaves, each one curving protectively over the carved symbol at their centres. One revealed a tent, another an eye, another a scroll. The three capitols opposite were less revealing: the carved centre having been hacked away by someone in the chamber's dim and distant past.

Juliet was standing in the centre of the room, pointing her torch down at faint, time eroded marks on the floor, delineating the shape of a small altar.

"What do you think was here?" Juliet had asked, pointing out the shape with the beam of her flashlight. She had turned the beam upward before Cal could answer her, and almost immediately dropped it with a startled gasp. The flashlight went out. In the darkness, Cal had heard Juliet swear. He had turned back to the feature he had been looking at and smiled, then reached up and placed his own flashlight on the ledge of the capitol, pointing outwards. Stepping into the centre of the room, he had raised Juliet to her feet.

"I don't think we need it," he remembered saying, his long arm reaching out to the side of the small room and moving his flashlight an inch to one side. Light had filled the tiny chamber, shimmering with a golden hue as their presence stirred up the dust of ages past. 

Juliet had laughed then, looking around her at the golden mirrors between the tops of each column. She had turned back to face him with such a look of joy and wonder on her face that he had mentally noted every curve and line, every hue and shadow, and had promised himself that he would remember it to the end of his days.

"How did you..." She had started.

"Just something Vincent taught me once," he had replied, cutting her off with a shrug.

She had looked upwards, back to the item that had first startled her, and this time he had followed her gaze. The vaulted ceiling above them sparkled, not with gold like the columns, but with tiny, twinkling pinpricks of white light in a sea of blue paint so dark it was almost black.

"They're stars!" Juliet had exclaimed in awe. "Look, you can see the constellations. There's Orion!"

She had turned another circle, this time with her gaze fixed on the ceiling, before she spoke again.

"I've never seen anything so beautiful," she had murmured, and he had agreed without even looking up once. Something in his voice must have betrayed him then, for her gaze had shot straight from the celestial ceiling to his face. Their eyes had locked, silence had descended, and what else could he have done then but kiss her.

The kiss had been gentle at first, but as she had returned it, with interest, it grew deeper. He didn't know how long they had remained there, locked in each others arms, until a stumble brought them out of the centre of the room, and back into the world around them.

She had backed away then, her hand raised to her mouth, her eyes downcast, searching the ground for answers. He had stepped towards her but she raised her other hand and stopped him.

"I'm with Anthony," she had said, picking up her torch and stumbling out of the chamber.

Those three words, not the three he had hoped for, had turned everything between them from then on sour. They had worked through the tunnels in different directions, slept at opposite sides of their small camp, spoken little and only when necessary. The kiss had never been mentioned by either of them then or since. It had only been alluded to between them once: when he confronted her in the archives with his suspicions of their own personal stumbling block.


	12. "I'm not going first."

Juliet looked down at the enigmatic words before her. The first stage of the translation was complete, for the runes on the box anyway. She’d even managed to translate some of the words and phrases into English. It was amazing how quickly one could get through the most tedious of tasks when one is determined not to let the only other person in the room distract them. Even if he didn’t know he was doing it. The only problem now was that she was as completely finished as she could be with the runic translation. Cal, working steadily through the coded runes from the tablet, looked like he still had a way to go.

She had double checked the script translation. Twice. She had translated as much of the text itself as she was sure of. She had thumbed through every book Cal was unlikely to ask for. Flicking through one of the less useful tomes, her eye had caught familiar symbols and she made a mental note to borrow the book later for use on deciphering the parchment. The parchment characters were some kind of abjad, suggesting a Semitic, or Proto-Semitic language, and too cursive and flowing for the wedge-dependent Cuneiform or almost runic Phoenician. They were not flowing enough, or elaborate enough, for Arabic and there were too many loops for Hebrew and most others of that ilk. It reminded her of the script they had found on the piece of the ring they found on Elm Island, but it didn’t quite match. Cal would probably take one look at it, now they had it back here in good lighting with all the tricks of the trade available to tease more than the top of the scroll open, and declare with absolute certainty what the script was, but Juliet’s innate curiosity was prodding her to find out if she could at least identify, if not decipher, the script herself. The article that had caught her eye dragged it onwards, reading now, rather than simply skimming. Warning bells tinkled in the back of her brain, telling her that any work she did on the parchment here, even without the relic itself, risked letting Cal know she had looked at the scroll without him, which in turn risked yet another fight at least some part of her did not want to have. Unfortunately, warning bells in the mind of a curious person are often as effective as a triangle in a brass band.

“What’s that?” Cal’s voice rumbled across the table like the distant thunder that heralded a storm. If he had been looking up, by the time Juliet looked round his head had dropped to his work again. “That book doesn’t have anything on Northern European languages and writings, it’s all about…”

Juliet turned her gaze back to the book. She could almost hear the penny drop.

“You looked at it without me, didn’t you,” accused Cal, sitting up and glaring the length of the table.

Juliet didn’t need to, or want to, turn and face that stare. “I just thought it might be useful background. I’m done translating the runes and this is interesting.”

“Well pardon me for being thorough!” Cal snapped back, sinking back to his work.

“Oh, come on: we both know there was more work involved with translating the tablet!” Juliet scoffed, dropping the book and looking over. “Besides: you lot all disappeared off to Alaska, and elsewhere before that too. What did you expect? That I wouldn’t even take a peek? What else was I going to do?”

“Finish your doctorate! Isn’t that why Professor Zond gave you the last four months off anyway?” Cal sat up and flung out an arm towards the door. “What if you’d damaged it? Even the most careful handling can cause irreparable harm to something that old! Did you at least record your little ‘peek’?”

“That took all of six weeks once you all left me here alone! Do you have any idea how much work we put in on a normal day compared to what the average PhD student does?”

“Not really, no!”

“Don’t you dare pull the boy genius line now!”

“Hey! You asked…”

“What the heck is going on here?” Professor Zond’s voice cut across the argument, silencing it. When no answer was forthcoming, Solomon folded his arms and looked from one doctor to the other. “I said, what is going on in here? We could hear you in Maggie’s lab!”

Clearly the analytical laboratory that was most often Maggie’s domain hadn’t been the only place their voices had reached. Juliet sighed and looked away as Nikko and Vincent appeared behind Solomon and Maggie.

“Okay, here’s what going to happen,” Solomon dictated, placing both hands firmly on the table between the two. “First, Calvin, you are going to tell me how the translations I asked you two to work on are progressing. Then, when that’s dealt with, Juliet, you are going to tell me what exactly you took a ‘peek’ at without Calvin or, for that matter, any of the rest of us!”

Juliet could feel Cal’s eyes boring into the back of her head, but she didn’t dare look round and meet them. What would happen if she did? It’s not like the whole world would implode and everything and everyone be snuffed out of existence. All she had to do was turn round. Turn round and acknowledge the group of people closer to her than her own flesh and blood, not that that was hard these days. Acknowledge that she had wanted something of her own, a discovery of her own, from that month of turmoil and confusion in Syria. Something to remind herself that there had been more happening during that trip than the memories that crowded at the forefront of her mind. Memories she was sure would be written in the air between them if she turned and met his eyes. Juliet listened to Cal update the professor in his most concise, professional manner and sighed, the air leaving her like the last breath of a dying man. Her shoulders sagged. Solomon called her name. She half turned in her chair, careful to look straight at the professor and not in any way at Cal.

“One of the artefacts we brought back from Syria,” she began, “one of the ones we haven’t shown you yet, was a scroll of parchment. I wanted to see if I could ID the script on my own – just to challenge myself - so I started copying the first part of the text. I’ve barely looked at it, just the bit that we unrolled ourselves in Syria, but couldn’t read because of the light,”

“Okay,” said Solomon, nodding and rising from the desk. “But why keep it to yourself? Why not tell Cal? You could have opened the scroll together then each worked on your own translations if you were that set on challenging yourself. For that matter, why not tell any of the rest of us? The scroll was your find, but the two of you were still part of a group expedition. It needs to be inventoried, just like the rest of the finds from that trip, and catalogued.”

“I took photos, both in Syria and here,” protested Juliet, “and I only opened the scroll as far as it had already been opened. You were away. There was no point in telling you: you couldn’t have done anything. I took all the proper precautions and kept the records for it up to date.”

“And what have you found out so far?” Solomon enquired, the patience beginning to return to his voice.

“I thought it looked similar to the text we found on the tablet from Elm Island, so I got a copy of the text out of the archives to check…”

“So that’s what you were doing there,” murmured Cal.

“It was similar,” Juliet continued, ignoring the comment, “but not quite right. I’ve been looking through various Semitic and Proto-Semitic scripts for something that matches.”

“And that’s what you found in the book,” murmured Cal, a little louder this time.

Solomon cast a glance at his best linguist then returned to Juliet. It was understandable that she might want to step out of Cal’s shadow for once. He had years more experience dealing with this field that Juliet did, but she was catching up on him fast. He nodded at the book in Juliet’s hands. “What did you find?”

Juliet opened the book to the pages she had been studying and turned it to face the group. “It’s an article on Petra, and some of the artefacts found there. The picture of a papyrus, in the bottom right corner, is just a trade contract but the script is the closest match I’ve found.”

“Nabatean?” Cal asked, now paying full attention.

Juliet nodded, risking a miniscule glance in his direction.

“What would a Nabatean text, on parchment, not papyrus, be doing in the catacombs of a ruined church in Syria?” Maggie wondered aloud.

“The Crusaders ruled Petra once,” nodded Solomon. “Baldwin the first, I think. There’s at least two Crusader-era castles there. I guess it’s conceivable that a papyrus was copied onto parchment and sent north. I can’t see it being just another trade contract, though.”

“I guess it depends what they were trading,” quipped Nikko from the doorway.

“Well, who knows. I guess we’ll just have to translate it and find out,” sighed Professor Zond. “Okay, well, once you’re done with the Alaskan tablet – and I mean completely done – if nothing else presents itself I want you two working on the Syrian scroll. Together. Peacefully if possible.”

****

_ 6 ½ Months ago – five days after the fall _

_Juliet’s mind was turning somersaults. She barely noticed the intricate and ancient artwork around her as she hurried back through the tunnels. She certainly paid no heed to where her feet were taking her. Away was the only direction. Away from the room of golden light and silver stars. Away from Cal. Away from the confusion racing through her thoughts and tearing them into an argument of epic proportions. It wasn’t like she had been seeing Anthony long. Just over a month now, and more than half of that had been spent on this expedition. She could easily tell him she didn’t want to see him any more. Not from here, through. Not via text or phone call. Certainly not via video call: Professor Zond had been quite clear about the importance of secrecy on any expedition Dorna might have an interest in. Not that he’d really needed to say it!_

_Her thoughts ran back to Cal. She had thought it was a crush. A momentary infatuation brought on by a moment that might have been stolen from a Hallmark movie. If it was, it now seemed it clearly went both ways. Maybe it was just the surroundings. Maybe they just got caught up in a magical moment surrounded by shimmering light and stars they were the first two people to see in who knows how many centuries. It’s not like they weren’t romantic enough! She hadn’t expected him to kiss her but somehow, in that ethereal room deep underground, it hadn’t been a surprise. The shock she was feeling was not at his reaction, but her own. She could have, should have, stepped back at that first, tentative, touch of lips. Instead she had caught him as he drew back and returned the kiss, wrapping his arms around her and tangling her hands in his shirt and hair. She didn’t know how long that second, deeper kiss had lasted. Time hadn’t been remotely on her mind. When a stray stone underfoot had caused her to stumble, tearing them apart, something had brought Anthony back into her mind. Whatever she felt for Cal, and whatever he felt for her, would have to wait for now, however difficult that might be. At least until she could end things with Anthony._

_A noise reverberating through the tunnels brought Juliet to a sudden stop. She looked around her, paying attention to her surroundings for the first time since her flight from the golden room and from Cal. She didn’t recognise the walls. With dawning horror, she realised she had no idea where she was, nor how much time had passed since leaving Cal. Reasoning that the noise must come from some machinery on the surface, and the loudest point would be at the cave-in, she headed onwards, towards the sound. The twists and turns in the tunnel made her doubt her choice, but she had no other option if she wanted to get back to their camp site. Doubling back, losing that guidance of the rumbling drone, trying to retrace her steps through corridors she could barely remember, would surely take her even further from her goal and further entrapped in the labyrinth. A junction loomed out of the darkness before her. Were these walls familiar? Maybe? Juliet turned this way and that, listening to the constant noise. Which tunnel would take her back to camp? She moved a few paces down one corridor, then the other. Neither seemed louder. A hand fell on her shoulder and Juliet spun round, out of the newcomer’s grasp._

_Cal held up his hands. “It’s me,” he soothed. “Just me. Come on: I grabbed what I could.”_

_“Is it Professor Zond?” Juliet frowned, taking the pack he handed her. “No, it can’t be…”_

_“Not the professor. Not the others. Not the authorities either,” reported Cal, grabbing Juliet’s hand and dragging her after him. “I was back at camp when the helicopter first showed up. Definitely Dorna. I did what I could to make the camp look abandoned, but I didn’t have time to take the tent down, so we’re sharing from here on out. Hopefully, they’ll think we’re long gone.”_

_“Where are we going?” Juliet demanded, hurrying to keep up with Cal._

_“Somewhere I found yesterday. Somewhere I hope they won’t be able to spot.”_

_They turned another corner and came to an abrupt stop. It was another vaulted chamber, but any gold that had once adorned its walls was now long gone. A fresco on the opposite wall still seemed bright and untouched. It showed Templars kneeling, two by two, before a shrine. Cal led Juliet over and pointed to the Latin above the shrine._

_“It’s a line from one of the psalms, I think. ‘Keep me safe, my God, for in you I take refuge.’ And look here.” Cal pointed at the ornate casket pictured in the midst of the shrine, directly below the words, then at the figure on the far side of it. “That figure isn’t a Templar, he’s dressed as you might expect someone local to the area. The hair and the beard too: it’s what you might expect locally, but it’s also how one of the most contemporary depictions of Saint Paul shows him. And he’s standing, not kneeling like the knights, and pointing at the centre of the shrine. Look closely: what do you see?”_

_“Cal, do we really have time for this?” Juliet cast a glance up at him then swiftly turned back to the fresco before their eyes could meet. “Dorna could come charging round one of these corners any minute.”_

_“We’d hear them first,” Cal replied. He turned Juliet’s face towards him and waited for her stubborn eyes to find his. “Trust me. Look at the casket.”_

_With a flutter of a frown and a sigh, Juliet turned back once more to the painting and studied the centrepiece of the shrine. The slight line between her brows deepened. “There’s a crack, all the way round.”_

_“Press it,” directed Cal._

_“Do you know what will happen if I do?” Juliet enquired, her patience drawing thin._

_“No, but there’s a quote about refuge right above it and the saint this place was probably dedicated to is pointing at it, so I’m guessing nothing terrible.”_

_Juliet sighed again at the shaky logic and considered her options. She pressed the casket. Somewhere behind the wall there was a click and not one but two panels slid open. One was twice as wide as the other._

_Juliet looked round to Cal. “Not terrible, I’ll grant you, but I’m not going first.”_

_“Enter by the ‘narrow door’, isn’t it?” Cal murmured, stooping to step through the smaller of the two openings. “Still alive. Come on.”_

_Juliet followed through the narrow door, turning on the spot when the door slid closed behind her. “I swear, Cal, if you’ve just got us locked in some ancient Templar priest hole…”_

_“Not a priest hole,” he replied, and Juliet could hear the grin before she saw it. “Look.”_

_As Cal had moved into the narrow room behind the door, another door had opened up, just as the one behind Juliet had closed. She followed him into the room beyond, this time ignoring the door that slid shut behind her. Though centuries old, the room they now looked upon had been untouched for almost as long. A fine layer of dust lay on the diamond shaped shelves, all stacked half full of crumbling scrolls, that ranged from wall to wall. One wall alone was free of scrolls. It was the wall through which they had entered. At the far end from the door was a desk, with writing materials and candles lying ready. In between stood a cabinet of solid dark wood, stretching all the way from the floor to the albeit low ceiling. It was clear that the cabinet could open. How, exactly, it did so was less clear._


	13. “Excuses, excuses.”

“How’s the carbon dating coming along?”

“You never were one for patience, Solomon,” sighed Maggie. “It’ll be back in a few hours. I rushed as much of the prep as I could, but sometimes real science takes time.”

“Oh really, real science?” Solomon scoffed, straightening from where he leant over a map weighted down at the corners with books and coffee mugs. “It’s like that is it?”

“You show me any one of your discoveries that did not make use of this lab and I will show you a lucky guess!” Maggie laughed back. “You’d be lost without an analyst and you know it!”

“I’d be lost without you, I know that,” murmured Solomon, perusing the map again. “I’ve been staring at these things so long, I think I’m lost right now!”

“I told you to wait until we had some idea of the dates,” smirked Maggie, looking round from her monitor. “The stable isotope analysis will give us a more precise location, but I won’t get through all of that until tomorrow morning, so let me at least put you slightly out of your misery for the moment.” She walked over to the printer and passed him the single page that had just been spat out. “The pollen belongs to a subspecies of grape vine found in these areas in what is now France. I can’t be a hundred percent certain, because the molecular clock for grape vines isn’t exactly as high a priority as it is for pretty much any animal species and wouldn’t tell us exactly what had changed anyway, but it’s as close as I can get and closer than I expected.”

Solomon looked at the shaded areas on the map in his hand, then at the much larger version on the desk. “Okay. Okay, here, give me a hand with the tracing paper would you, please, Maggie.” He flipped a switch on the side of the desk and light shone through from below the map. “Thank you.”

****

Nikko flicked from one camera angle to another and reached for another handful of popcorn. Inventory wasn’t the most interesting of tasks but he and Vincent had had enough practise working together on it by now that it was at least a straightforward and swift one, especially when Vincent wanted to check on the new security stuff afterwards. It wasn’t as if there weren’t enough cameras in the building! He had six different options in the linguistics lab alone! Only three were really any good for a clear view of Cal or Juliet’s face, though, or of the whole table from one of the upper corner cameras. In the half hour that he’d been hacked into his dad’s office computer, spying on his friends, he had watched first one then the other look along the length of the table, then look away before the other spotted them so often that he was convinced they would have been easily finished by now if they could only keep their minds on the task before them. He reached for another handful of popcorn and was mildly disheartened to find the bowl empty. He shrugged and switched to the high camera again. Calvin was looking up now, silently. If there was sound on these things, he hadn’t found it yet, and to be honest he hadn’t really looked. For the most part Nikko could make out what both parties were saying, if he was on the right camera at the time, and Cal wasn’t saying anything right now anyway. If the camera happened to be the wrong one, the stuff Nikko missed made it difficult to keep track sometimes, but he’d already looped his tablet into the server where the data was being stored: he could always watch it back again later.

Juliet looked up and began speaking just as Nikko reached for his water. He flicked the main screen over to the camera that showed her face with one hand and retrieved the glass with the other. He switched to the feed showing Cal’s face and watched his reply. He choked on his water.

“Nikko, there you are,” stated Vincent’s ever-placid voice from the doorway. If the sight of the young graduate trying to breathe, swallow water, switch the monitor off, put down the glass, and mop up any spills, all at the same time, affected or amused him in any way, he didn’t show it. “May I speak with you, please? In the training room?”

Nikko nodded, gasping for air between coughs. “Be righ… Be right… Right with you.”

It was still a mad dash to remove the evidence, but not long afterwards Nikko sauntered into the training room his usual, boisterous self. The swagger left him as soon as he saw the look on Vincent’s face. To call it ‘grave’ would be an injustice. Vincent often looked ‘grave’. ‘Grave’ was what Nikko liked to think of as Vincent’s ‘working face’, with an occasional option on ‘mysterious’. This face wasn’t ‘grave’ or ‘mysterious’. This face was definitely ‘troubled’. Vincent never looked ‘troubled’. If anything, Vincent made other people look ‘troubled’.

“What’s up?” Nikko frowned. He glanced around the room and his eye caught the stone in the centre of the floor. “Oh. Uh… Meditation practice?”

“Meditation is by it’s very nature a practice,” Vincent murmured, pacing around the room, hands clasped behind his back, until he and Nikko faced each other across the stone. “I have spent many hours in meditation, and seen many others do likewise, but never in all that time had I seen, or heard of, one who could move a stone with it. Never until yesterday, that is, when I returned from escorting our uninvited guest out of the building and making sure he stayed out. I believe you know the time to which I am referring.”

“Uh… Um…” Nikko stammered, trying desperately to come up with an excuse and knowing it was already too late.

“Do not lie to me Nikko,” warned Vincent.

“No, I… I wasn’t going to.”

“Then you will be happy to tell me how long this has been going on for,” mused Vincent, “and what, if you have any idea, started it.”

****

_ 6 ½ Months ago – five days after the fall _

_“Okay, not a priest hole,” Juliet agreed, surveying the walls of scrolls. “Whatever this place is doesn’t change the fact that there’s now two closed doors between us and the outside world that we don’t know how to open.”_

_“We don’t want to open them,” Cal pointed out. “At least, not yet.”_

_Juliet ran her flashlight over the outline of the second door, “Maybe, but I’d still feel a lot better knowing we had that option.”_

_“We’ll be fine, I promise,” murmured Cal, leaning over the desk in the corner._

_Juliet glanced over at him then turned her attention to the nearest set of scrolls. “You can’t know that, Cal.”_

_“Actually I can,” he replied. A warm light bloomed in the corner and cast a dusty shadow over the scrolls Juliet was examining. “You remember that voice I told you about?”_

_“Assurances from a concussion aren’t really a great thing to base your argument on,” muttered Juliet, stepping away from the scrolls and turning to the cabinet. She glanced at the candle now burning in its holder. “Is that really a good idea in a room full of really dry, really dusty, really old parchments?”_

_“It really is,” quipped Cal, earning him an eyeroll from Juliet, even if it was directed at the wooden cabinet door in front of her. “Look, we don’t know how long Dorna are going to be out there. We should conserve our batteries and settle down to wait awhile.”_

_“You settle down,” grumbled Juliet. “I want to know what this thing is and how it opens, and if it has anything to do with opening those doors again.”_

_“We’ll get the doors open,” Cal assured her._

_“Because your concussion says so,” Juliet retorted._

_“Because the voice said…”_

_Cal stopped so abruptly Juliet forgot she was trying not to look at him and turned. She met his eyes, her own narrowed. “Said what?”_

_This time, it was Calvin who looked away._

_“The voice said what, Cal?” Juliet repeated._

_“It wasn’t… It didn’t… Ugh!” Cal shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it. It didn’t so much tell me stuff as… I don’t know, upload, download, whatever, information into my brain. Information that I know is real and true. I don’t know how I know it. I can’t prove any of it. Only time will do that.”_

_“And this knowledge included the fact that we will get out of this room?” Juliet raised an eyebrow at him._

_“Yes.”_

_“Did it include instructions about_ how _to get out of this room?”_

_“The room itself wasn’t exactly mentioned.”_

_“Then how exactly do you know we get out of here?” Juliet pressed, watching a myriad of expressions chase each other across her friend’s face. “Did it tell you you’re going to win the lottery or something?”_

_Cal shrugged and reached for the easy answer. “In a manner of speaking. Something like that, yes.”_

_“Something like that,” Juliet echoed. “Something like what, Cal? Spit it out! You want me to believe this voice wasn’t the product of a head injury that left you blind for three days, you’re going to have to tell me more than that.”_

_Cal sighed, searching the ceiling of the room like it had the words he was looking for scrawled across it in illegible handwriting._

_“Calvin?” Juliet prodded, turning her flashlight on his face fully. “Tell me.”_

_Another sigh, this time one of defeat. “Fine, but for the record, I didn’t want to tell you this. At least not yet.”_

_“Duly noted,” nodded Juliet. “Now tell me.”_

_“Part of the knowledge the voice left me with,” began Cal, now searching the floor for words, “was that you and I… That we would end up together. Long term.”_

_“When you say together…”_

_“I mean exactly what you think I mean.”_

_“So what: we’re destined to fall in love?” Juliet frowned with a laugh. The laugh faded. The frown did not. “Is that why you kissed me?”_

_“What? No!” Cal flinched, as though the accusation had walked up and slapped him. “No, I… I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you. And because I thought, maybe, you wanted... maybe you wanted to kiss me too. And because it just felt like… like the right thing to do at the time!”_

_“At the time?” Juliet echoed, both eyebrows rising now. “So what? Now you wish you hadn’t?”_

_Cal’s eyes snapped up to meet hers. “I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean it either.”_

_“Then what did you mean, Calvin?” Juliet snapped._

_“Hey, you kissed me back!” Cal countered. “I just meant that for a moment I forgot that anyone else in the world existed but you and I. I forgot that we have a job to do here. I forgot that we have to go on working together after this. I forgot that the creeps who always seem to be on our tail these days might show up any moment. I most definitely forgot that you had a brand new boyfriend waiting back home for you and, for a moment at least, so did you.”_

_Juliet turned away, shaking her head. “I got caught up in a moment, that’s all. Just a moment. I’m not going to turn my world upside down because your head injury says so!”_

_“You know it wasn’t just a head injury, Juliet,” pressed Cal, watching her. “You and I have seen crazier stuff than that in the past few years.”_

_“Not usually involving the two of us, though.”_

_“Antarctica.”_

_“I said ‘not usually’, not ‘not ever’!”_

_“The Uffizi.”_

_“Coincidence. And running into an ex is not exactly crazy, or even unusual!”_

_“Spooky Templar castle.”_

_“That affected everyone.”_

_“My point exactly!”_

_“What makes you think this isn’t caused by some form of Helmholtz resonance too?”_

_“Uh, remind me who that castle affected first?”_

_“Not the point!”_

_“Yes it is! The resonance affected everyone there! Why would it only affect me and not you here?”_

_“Ugh!” Juliet threw up her hands and turned away. “None of this is helping get us out of here.”_

_“If Dorna think we’re hiding in the tunnels they’re going to be out there a while; like days, not hours,” reasoned Calvin. “Maybe we can’t get out yet, but it seems as long as we’re in here, they can’t get in.”_

_“So_ you _think,” sighed Juliet, finally switching off her flashlight. “Fine, we’ll set up camp here for the night.”_

_“Maybe two.”_

_“Maybe… What?”_

_“We can’t exactly go out there and ask them to hurry their search along, can we.”_

_“Professor Zond will want to know why we’ve locked ourselves in a mediaeval librarian’s panic room,” muttered Juliet. She flicked her flashlight on again and considered the cabinet. “Any suggestions?”_

_Cal shrugged. “I think you’re looking at it. You really think he’s not going to want to know what’s inside that thing?”_

_“We should take a look at the scrolls too,” she murmured, turning to the opposite wall. “There’s so many of them.”_

_“Yeah, but the wrong handling and they’re dust,” he noted, peering at the scrolls resting in the shelf Juliet’s flashlight was trained on. “They’re completely desiccated. We should add them to the list of things to bring back specific kit for. They’ll need some serious stabilising.”_

_“What about the desk?” Juliet asked, turning again._

_“It’s a desk,” shrugged Cal. “Writing materials, candles, couple other odds and ends. Nothing hugely significant or interesting.”_

_“So, the cabinet it is then,” she sighed._

_“Juliet, it’s a room high strongbox that hasn’t been opened in centuries,” Cal pointed out flourishing both hands at the ancient piece of furniture. “At least try to sound a little curious when you tell the professor about it!”_

_“Maybe you should tell him yourself, if you’re so excited about it!” Juliet shot back. “He’ll get suspicious if he doesn’t see you soon.”_

_Cal wordlessly pointed to the still clearly visible gash on his forehead._

_Juliet rolled her eyes. “Excuses, excuses.”_


	14. "How long?"

Maggie looked from the printout in her hand to the traced map of central Europe. Solomon was never happy doing nothing. While she worked through the analysis of the various samples, he had traced the outlines of modern-day France, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands, with parts of Austria and Italy showing at the edges. He had taken the pollen data and added in faint blue pencil the outlines of the regions the species was known in. Other lines, also in pencil but each in their own colour, had been added last, when the carbon dating data finally came in. These were the outlines of the countries that had existed when the pollen found its way into the box. Following imagined lines from the edges of the map, where longitude and latitude were marked, Maggie tapped a finger on a small blue edged blob on the border between modern day France and Germany. She nodded to herself and checked her watch. They had both worked late last night, but they were both early risers. At this hour, she would most likely find him in the training room, probably with Vincent.

Maggie made her way down a level to the fitness rooms. The building their benefactor had purchased for them could have housed far more labs than Solomon had, being given carte blanche on the outfitting of the place, installed. There were five floors in all, if you counted the basement. Archives and a few other things were housed down there. Fitness rooms, offices and a communal kitchen lived on the first floor, labs on the second, living quarters up on the third. She had no idea what was housed on the fourth. In all the years she had known and worked with Solomon, the topic of what was up on the top floor had come up once, when he introduced her to the building. She had asked and he had told her there was nothing, yet. Whether or not that was still the case had never come up.

The sound of laughter broke through Maggie’s thoughts. It was Nikko’s laughter, though Solomon’s followed soon after. Maggie smiled. In the past two years, all the distance Haley’s death had placed between father and son had receded. It was good to see. Haley would have been glad to see them so close too. Maggie paused at the door of the training room where the two were sparring and watched them trade more jests than jabs. There were few people left in their lives who had known them when Haley was around to complete the family, but Maggie had. She remembered watching Solomon and his wife train the same way, both before and after Nikko had come along. At least now, up against his son rather than his wife, Solomon had a chance of winning.

The pair finally noticed Maggie at the door and paused.

“Progress?” Solomon asked, throwing a towel at his son.

“The stable isotope analysis is back,” nodded Maggie. “It confirms your hunch.”

“Ah, you mean my deduction,” corrected the professor.

“Lucky guess,” smiled Maggie.

“Logic and deduction are just as scientific as…”

“We have a location?” Nikko broke in, passing a water bottle to his father. “We know where the tablet came from?”

“We know where it was placed in the box,” corrected Maggie.

“Go on,” said Solomon, handing the bottle back to his son. “Go take a shower and I’ll meet you, and the others, in Maggie’s lab.”

Maggie watched Nikko disappear down the hall. “No offence, Solomon – I say this as your friend – but that boy isn’t the only one in need of a shower.”

“Hey!”

“I said what I said!” Maggie retorted with a smirk. “And I said what I came down here to say, so go do us all a favour and don’t you come into my lab until you can walk in there without me having to recalibrate all those super-sensitive new toys we just got!”

****

“How is your Alaskan puzzle box progressing?” Anthony enquired politely.

He was walking Juliet to work – a daily custom – and it was obvious her mind was preoccupied by something far more interesting than their usual topics of real estate, city architecture, and making up stories about the people they passed on their way. The bright sun of late summer threw gently waving patterns of light and shade through the leafy branches above onto the street below, and Juliet’s eyes seemed to have been mesmerised by their rippling dance for the past block and a half.

“Hm?” Juliet looked up at a nudge from Anthony. “Sorry, what was that?”

“Your little puzzle box that you were looking at the other day,” Anthony patiently repeated. “You had some text to translate, didn’t you? How are you doing with it? It seems stuck on your mind this morning. Or is this some new puzzle you’re thinking of?”

“Oh, that,” Juliet shook her head. “No – I mean yes. No… Um…”

“It can’t be both, my dear,” beamed Anthony, with his most charming smile.

“I finished my translation,” explained Juliet. “It wasn’t that I was thinking of.”

“Already!” Anthony smiled. “That was fast! What did it say? Anything interesting?”

“There wasn’t that much text,” frowned Juliet, wondering what made her more uncomfortable: the questions her boyfriend asked her or the way he asked them. “When the script and the language a text is written in are both known, translating is a straightforward task, for the most part. Cal had the more difficult job.”

“Ah, you were working with Calvin,” smiled Anthony, though if Juliet had been watching him she might have noticed the smile did not reach his eyes. “How is he? No more accidents I hope.”

“Oh, um… Fine, I guess. No more crutches, anyway, although Cal does spend most of the day sitting down. He tries to hide it if anyone’s around but I can tell he’s still in some pain. I don’t know what medication the doctors put him on, but he’s probably not taking anything for pain relief. Not unless there’s some other reason for taking it too. You know: like anti-inflammatories. Cal’s stubborn like that. He wouldn’t take anything at all when he had that fall in Syria. Although Cal did managed to run through a handful of corridors with a bullet hole in his leg once, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“He does appear undisputedly accident prone,” hissed Anthony, through his teeth. “What was it that happened in Syria?”

“Oh, nothing particularly untoward,” shrugged Juliet, watching the dancing sunlight shiver in a sudden breeze. “A floor he was excavating was the ceiling to something else and it gave way below him. It’s a hazard of the job. Cal was fine.”

“Not so fine that he didn’t hold you up for weeks, my dear,” Anthony contradicted with a gentle smile. This time his eyes did crease a little.

“Oh, that wasn’t Cal’s injuries,” Juliet assured her boyfriend, oblivious to the faint dimming of the smile this news caused. “That was what we found in the room he fell into, and those leading off it. We spent most of our time there cataloguing what we found so that we could go back with a team later. Cal was determined to take a record of as much as possible, you know: just in case. It’s not the most stable region of the world. With only the two of us if took longer than it would usually.”

“Only the two of you, yes,” mused Anthony. “And when do I get to see these marvels that you keep discovering? Surely a museum somewhere will want to exhibit them? Or is that something else the good professor wishes to keep to himself?”

“What? Oh, no, most of those artefacts are still _in situ_ : Cal and I didn’t move them. We took as many records as we could, like I said, but we couldn’t move most of the things we found. It will take a lot of specialised kit to… well, to do what we need to do there. I’m sorry, I don’t think the professor would like me talking about it too much. Especially when Cal and I haven’t really had time to analyse the data we brought back.”

“Not even to me?” Anthony coaxed. “You know I don’t understand half of what you tell me, I just like to hear you talk about your work.”

Juliet’s lip twitched upwards in a half smile. “Even so, it’s part of the job. None of us can discuss our finds with anyone, outside of the team, until…”

“…until they are made public knowledge, yes, I know. I do remember you telling me, darling,” Anthony smiled. “I just don’t see why that rule has to include one’s partner. Surely it can’t be right for them to keep something so trivial from our private discussions. It’s not like we’re shouting our business to the whole street.”

“But we are on the street, Anthony, and those are the rules,” Juliet growled, pulling her arm free from her boyfriend’s grasp. “Anyway, we’re here now and I think it’s best you go. Cal and I have work to do and Vincent is probably still on the lookout for you. One foot into the courtyard and he’ll be standing at that door ready to send you on your way. In fact, it might be better if we make that a rule from now on.”

Juliet turned her back on her boyfriend without waiting for his reply. She reached the door without pausing to glance behind her. When she did, Anthony was gone, swallowed up by the morning hustle and bustle of the street. The door opened for her, but it was Nikko, not Vincent who held it.

“No Tony this morning?” Nikko grinned, utterly devoid of shame as usual.

“I thought it was best he stay outside the foundation gates from now on,” she replied, nodding her thanks as she stepped inside. “No Vincent? He was glaring through the window at us yesterday!”

“Dentist appointment, I think,” shrugged Nikko. “Dad dragged me down to train with him instead. Anyway, I’m sure Tony’s learnt his lesson. Vincent’s being especially terrifying right now.”

“He’s just a little overprotective,” laughed Juliet. “We were married for an evening once, you know.”

****

“How long?”

“Two years,” replied Vincent.

“And you knew nothing of this?”

“Nothing, I assure you.” Vincent looked up at his companion, who was now staring back at him in incredulity. “The first instance occurred soon after our return from your father’s castle. He told none of us, and was accepted into his father’s alma mater on an accelerated course the week after. He has practiced his ability, and explored it somewhat, in the privacy of his dorm room, and it was not until his graduation ceremony that he found he could affect objects further from him than a metre or so.”

De Molay tugged at his chin in thought. “It is imperative that his training now focusses on this psychokinesis and any other abilities that may henceforth develop. He may very well be more important than we believed. And you say you have a new lead on the Ring?”

“Indeed,” Vincent nodded. “Though what exactly we may expect to find at the location is anyone’s guess. The tablet we retrieved in Alaska is similar enough to the one found on Elm Island to hypothesise that it too is one of the spacers in the Ring. I believe, once the riddle found in the coded section is deciphered, it will lead us to another clue, rather than a part of the Ring itself, but Solomon is more optimistic.”

“That it should arise now, as young Nikko rejoins the team, is significant, I am certain. Solomon spent years chasing down leads until his son joined him, and in the past two years progress has slowed almost to a standstill, save in those holidays where Nikko returns. He is linked to the Ring. More so than any of the others. His safety is now paramount, Vincent. You must protect him at all costs!”

“Even at that of another member of the team?” Vincent queried, a miniscule flicker of a frown the only hint of discomfort.

“Even at that of _every_ other member of the team!” De Molay insisted. “Even Solomon himself! Nicholas may be the key to everything, Vincent! He is now far more important than his father!”

“Understood,” Vincent nodded and rose. “One more thing,” he said, half turned towards the door. “Nikko has asked that I keep this ability a secret from the others, and especially from his father.”

“An interesting request considering what these people have endured together,” mused de Molay. “What was your reply?”

“I said I would think about it,” replied Vincent, watching his employer keenly. “I wished to update you before making any decision. On the one hand, keeping something like this from Solomon may damage his trust in me. On the other, as I suspected, you now wish my primary allegiance to lie with Nikko, not his father. Does this extend to more than the boy’s security? Do you want me to keep his secrets too?”

De Molay was silent for a moment, staring down at the notes and diagrams on his desk. “Hardly a boy now, I would say. You and I were both deemed men by his age. One does not reach adulthood by surviving a set number of years or by only making right choices. One reaches adulthood by taking ownership of the consequences of those choices, be they right or wrong. He has a right to his own secrets, especially when keeping said secret for him can only strengthen your bond.”

“The knowledge of his abilities may affect how his father utilises him in the field. He is no longer a pawn on the board,” argued Vincent, watching de Molay’s face all the while. “He is, at the very least, a knight.”

“He may even be more important a piece than that,” nodded de Molay. “You must use your own judgement in this, I fear, my friend. Keep his secret as long as seems fitting to you. If the situation arises where you feel it must be shared, then do so, however seems best. I trust in your abilities, Vincent. They have not let us down thus far.”

De Molay watched Vincent leave then, when the click of the latch signalled the closing of his study door, turned his attention back to the papers on his desk. Most were notes he had made through the years on the possibilities of certain personages. Some were diagrams of items he deemed important in his grand endeavour. A few were maps or architectural plans. One was a genealogical tree. De Molay’s right hand smoothed the paper of the much added to tree. His own name was on there, generations back. It was not his own name, however, that his eye now rested on. Instead, index finger tapping in a rare display of troubled thoughts, the name de Molay looked upon was Zond.


	15. “Not now. Not ever.”

Cooking, unless it involved a frying pan, was not a Zond skill, neither father nor son, but coffee definitely was. Juliet filled the broad, oversized mug and stood for a moment taking in the aroma as if every inhalation could replace an hour’s worth of lost sleep. It suited her to let Anthony think her tired eyes and contagious yawns were the product of the box and its contents, but too many people in this neat little puzzle box of her life would spot that lie in an instant. She might get away with it with the Professor or Maggie if they were focussed on something else. Either one of them could switch focus faster than she cared to admit, though. Nikko and Vincent were always either focussed on everything or nothing these days, and neither option boded well for her. And Cal...

“You’re early,” Cal’s voice had the effect a shower and three large, strong coffees had failed to have. Juliet jumped, some of the hot liquid sloshing over the side of the still full mug. Cal grabbed a cloth and hurried over. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s okay,” winced Juliet, putting the coffee down before it could do any more damage and turning to the sink. The cold water stung, but there was no chance of her drifting into another daydream now. “I overfilled it.”

“You okay?” Cal frowned down at her, mopping up the spilt coffee.

“Other than the literally scalding wake-up call?” Juliet laughed. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

“I’ve seen you tired,” began Cal, but Juliet held up a hand.

“Don’t, not right now,” she warned. The pain in her hand still stung, but now her fingers were starting to go numb with the cold too. Juliet turned off the tap and grabbed a towel, then her coffee. “I’ll see you in the lab. We’ve got a job to do.”

Cal’s eyebrows flicked upwards, the only outward sign that Juliet’s last words had hit home. He threw the coffee soaked cloth in the sink and poured himself a mug. Maybe Juliet wouldn’t have told Nikko as much as he had, but the kid had certainly made her drag up some ill-buried memories. The question now was whether Juliet would be able to bury them again, like she had the first time.

****

_ 6 ½ Months Ago – five days after the fall _

_“Anything?”_

_“Nothing.”_

_“Juliet, come sit down and eat something. You need a break.”_

_“Don’t tell me what I need, Calvin.”_

_Cal held up his hands in surrender. “Whatever. There’s water and food there for you when you want it. I’m going to sleep.”_

_Juliet rounded on him. “How can you sleep now? Dorna might come through that door any minute!”_

_“They won’t, I…”_

_“Don’t,” warned Juliet, wagging a finger at him. “Don’t you dare say you ‘have faith’, or you ’know’ or any other reference to anything you may or may not have heard while cracking your skull open on some dodgy mediaeval masonry.”_

_“My skull is fine,” yawned Cal. “Aside from a small cut, a huge bruise and a headache that varies somewhere in between, I’m fine. Besides, I think it’s clear this room was more than just a quiet little space for a scribe to get some work done in. We have a door that wouldn’t open until the one behind it was closing. I’m ninety percent sure I was standing on a pressure plate at the time and wouldn’t be surprised if this solid stone floor turns out to be another. One that keeps that door closed until the person on this side chooses otherwise. Then there’s the mysterious cabinet that refuses to open. Hardly the sort of thing found in your everyday scriptorium.”_

_“Why do you think I’m trying to open it, Calvin?” Juliet shot back._

_“Eat, sleep,” suggested Cal. “Then we’ll both look at it in the morning with clear heads.”_

_“Not tired, not hungry,” replied Juliet, running her fingers over the line of one wooden panel._

_Cal sighed and lay down. “Suit yourself.”_

****

If Professor Solomon Zond noticed Juliet and Calvin arrive for the morning briefing almost simultaneously and later than everyone else bar Vincent, he said nothing. Nikko stayed silent also, but his expression was eloquent. Juliet considered throwing the remains of her coffee at him, but decided she needed it more. Either he or Cal would surely try and talk to her about Syria at the next given opportunity and she had not had enough hours of sleep to deal with either of them. It didn’t help that the very topic they both wanted to discuss, from completely different viewpoints and for – at least she hoped – completely different reasons, was in part responsible for keeping her awake all night. She hated – really, truly hated – to admit it, but she had a growing feeling that Cal was right. Right about Anthony, at least. Right to be suspicious. Anything else was, well, coincidence. Of course she felt uncomfortable with him in her personal space. Wouldn’t everyone? So what if her pulse jumped every time he was near her: that didn’t mean anything. Maybe her relationship with Anthony was on the rocks. Maybe she would break up with him. It still didn’t mean a severe knock on the head could predict the future. Even if things did go that way, and she did end up with Cal, it would be because she chose that path, not because it had been chosen for her. They had always worked well together, as friends and colleagues, and maybe they would be a good match. Maybe a logical match. Maybe that was all Cal’s ‘premonition’ was: logic. The logic of his unconscious, subconscious, whatever, put together with the hundred tiny clues that must have been so blindingly obvious after he caught her at the foot of the jet stairs.

“Juliet? Juliet!” Professor Zond’s voice broke through the haze of Juliet’s mind.

“Huh? Sorry,” Juliet blinked the world back into focus. “Sorry, Professor, what was that?”

“I said we leave in two hours. Get what you need for a few nights, maybe a week, and meet us at the airfield.”

“Right, sure, of course,” nodded Juliet. She watched everyone file out. One notable figure hung back.

“You sure you’re okay?” Cal murmured from his side of the table. “I take it back. You are tired.”

“Just a lot on my mind,” replied Juliet, shaking her head. Her eyes finally focussed on the strange map in the middle of their workspace. “Where are we going?”

“Wissembourg, North-eastern France, on the border with Germany. Maggie worked her magic on the samples and her data fits with our findings. It’s France in August, so pack warm, but bring a raincoat.”

Juliet nodded, still watching the map as if it held all the answers to all the mysteries of the world. Maybe it did, in a way. Or maybe it just held the answers to this little cache of conundrums.

“You know you can still talk to me about stuff,” Cal added, watching the unmoving form opposite him. “Whatever else I may or may not be to you, Juliet, I will always be your friend.”

Juliet’s eyes flicked up to his. The world held its breath. “I think you were right.”

****

_ 6 ½ Months Ago – six days after the fall _

_Juliet awoke with a start. She winced and groaned, raising a hand to the back of her neck. She was sitting slumped against the cabinet, her head aching from where it had rested against the leg of the desk. A shiver ran through her. Whatever heat the underground room had gathered during the day, it now appeared to have lost. Flicking on her flashlight, she saw Cal, wrapped up in a sleeping bag, fast asleep on the floor on the opposite side of the room. Her sleeping bag lay by him, ready for whenever she chose to use it._

_It took her a moment to persuade her stiff limbs to cooperate, but Juliet managed to raise herself to a crouch without making too much noise. There was, after all, no reason why at least one of them shouldn’t get a good night’s sleep, if they were able. The light from her flashlight fell on the base of the cabinet. The seemingly solid wood panels reached right down to the stone floor of the room, the grain of the aged wood reflecting warm treacle-toned light streaked with gold. A jump in the pattern of the grain caught Juliet’s eye. It was small, but it was there. She reached out and brushed her fingers over the mismatch. There was a cut in the wood there. She followed it, tracing its edge with the tips of her fingers. The cut turned and moved horizontally for a while, then down. It was a box. A rectangular box in the wood, right at its base, large enough for a foot to find and press. Juliet stood up, careful to keep her foot beside the box. Should she wake Cal first? It might be nothing: just a patch in the base of a centuries old cabinet that must surely have been damaged at some point in its life. On the other hand, it was the only clue she had found so far._

_Slowly, steadily, Juliet pushed the rectangular panel inward. There was resistance at first but then a click and the bone-shaking, grinding sound of stone moving against stone for the first time in almost a millennium. Cal sat up._

_“What’s going on?” Cal demanded over the juddering cacophony of ancient mechanisms re-awakening._

_“I found it,” replied Juliet, turning her flashlight on the now only marginally different cabinet._

_“I may still be asleep,” murmured Cal, running a hand over his eyes, “but that sounded like an awful lot of noise for not a lot of difference in the thing.”_

_“Maybe,” shrugged Juliet. She reached out a hand to the side of the cabinet and the door swung open to her arm. She reached over and flicked open the other door. The top half of the cabinet now showed a variety of locked boxes and pigeon holes. Most were empty. Some held dusty and decaying bags of coins. Juliet fished a lockpick out of her pocket and started work on the locked boxes. “Are you going back to sleep or are you going to help me with this.”_

_“If I do, will you please eat something?” Cal bargained, disentangling himself from his sleeping bag and finding his own lockpick._

_“When we’re done,” Juliet promised the lock she was working on. “If I’m hungry.”_

****

“You’re gonna have to be more specific,” breathed Cal, edging round the corner of the table, hands in pockets. “We haven’t exactly been agreeing on much lately.”

“Right about Tony, Anthony,” Juliet replied, correcting the slip with a shrugged shoulder and shake of her head as she edged round the corner of the table at her end. “Right to be suspicious. There’s something not right.”

“You think he’s Dorna?” Cal murmured, watching Juliet drain the last of her coffee and set the mug down beside the map.

“I don’t know, he…” Juliet broke off with a wince and turned her attention to the empty mug. “These last few days, since you’ve all been back, with the artefact and all… I don’t know, it’s like he wants to know all about my work, even though he says he doesn’t understand it and he wants me to quit. He says it’s too dangerous, then he starts sneaking into the building. He wants to know how the labs are set up and how closely we work together. At first I thought it was just, you know: he’s jealous of you, same way you’re jealous of him.”

“I’m not jealous,” broke in Cal. “ I just think he’s going to hurt you and I know he’s not right for you.”

“I’m beginning to think you’re right about that too,” admitted Juliet, looking up from the empty mug. “About him not being right for me. Because he’s throwing up way too many red flags for me right now. But he won’t hurt me. Not now. Not ever. He can’t.”

“You sure about that?” Cal asked, watching her eyes. For once, they didn’t look away.

“I’m sure.”

****

“What’s the fuss?” Vincent enquired of a rapidly receding Solomon Zond. He had returned to the Veritas building in time to pass Solomon on the way to the kitchen.

“I forgot to pick up the water for the jet,” Solomon called, reappearing from the kitchen doorway with a plastic five gallon bottle of water in each hand. He handed one to Vincent as he passed him. “Car’s out back.”

“Where are we going?” Vincent requested, following Solomon out through the building’s corridors to the slowly filling vehicle that awaited them.

“France,” replied Solomon, handing his water bottle to Nikko, who was leaning up against the driver’s door. Solomon raised his eyebrows at his son. “No!”

“But…” Nikko’s complaints were lost as his father turned back to the building, Vincent, sans water bottle, following.

“Little town on the German border, top of the Alsace region,” elaborated the Professor. “It’s called Wissembourg. You know it?”

“Not off the top of my head,” admitted Vincent. The two men turned and headed up the stairs. “I’m familiar with some of the history of the region though. It has changed hands numerous times, I believe.”

“Lots of times,” agreed Solomon with a nod. “Maggie’s analysis puts the box there or thereabouts somewhere in the sixth to seventh centuries, although we think the tablet is older. We know there is an abbey church in Wissembourg that was built in the… Well, all the way through the mediaeval period, really. For the most part, what you see is what was built in the latter part of the thirteenth century at the order of the Abbot Edelin, but some parts didn’t appear until a couple of hundred years later and the oldest section dates from a couple of hundred years before. There’s been an abbey there, though, from the seventh century, same time period as our box. Now records are a little sketchy on when exactly the abbey was founded because it seems there was a point in their history when it was deemed necessary to do a little rewrite of the official record, however, all variations of the truth put it in that century somewhere and I am willing to bet that whatever caused someone to put down roots in one of the most contested chunks of land in the area has something to do with that box. Almost as soon as it was founded, the abbey apparently grew and grew in wealth and stature until sometime in the tenth century when one of the local bigwigs decided to take a sizeable chunk of the abbeys holdings for his own church. We can’t be sure if the box was already gone by then, but we know it wasn’t there by the time the majority of the current church was built.”

Vincent, barely out of breath, paused with his friend on the upper landing. “How so?”

Solomon, considerably more out of breath than Vincent, held up a hand for a moment’s pause. “The Codex Edelini,” he gasped. “The same bishop who caused the building of the current structure also ordered a book to be written inventorying all the remaining property of the abbey. He also had all the properties the abbey had lost included in the book. Neither list mentions any kind of relic or box matching our box’s description.”

“Then what do you hope to find there?” Vincent frowned, falling in step with Solomon again as they made their way along the corridor.

“I don’t know,” Solomon shrugged, stopping outside Vincent’s door. “A clue, some hint of how the box got there perhaps. Maybe even whether the box originated there and the tablet came to the region from further afield.”

“Dorna will be watching us,” warned the security expert.

“Ah, when aren’t they,” Solomon shrugged again and turning to his own door across the hall. “Besides: if they’re not skulking in the shadows I start worrying I’m not doing my job properly! We shouldn’t be more than a few days, a week tops. Don’t take too long packing.”

“I always have a bag ready,” grinned Vincent.


	16. “Well, fancy that!”

Wissembourg was a small town centred at the mouth of a winding valley, starting with a narrow trail of houses then broadening where the steeper, heavily forested hills gave way to rolling farmland and vineyards. The irregular town plan, so common in communities with so long and diverse a history, clearly centred on the abbey, whose western church tower – a relic of the earlier, eleventh century building – was almost hidden from view by its newer, more recent, counterpart at the eastern end of the church as the team drove up the nearly straight road through the centre of town to the abbey. Maggie turned left at the junction, then right, following the road over a small bridge and past a tower that looked almost as old as the elder part of the church. The first house over the bridge did not appear to have an entrance onto the street. Just before it, Maggie took a sharp left, turning down a shaded lane to turn into a small car park completely hidden from view of the main road. The main entrance of the house opened onto it and there was only one other car visible.

“I got us all rooms here,” she explained, “but there’s a catch. It’s holiday season and most places are booked up, so I was surprised to find this place had space for us: it only has three rooms. Apparently there’s been some renovations going on, though and the owner had only just re-opened the online booking this morning. I booked a week, just in case, and it’s bed and breakfast so the most important meal of the day is sorted at least.”

“Three rooms,” echoed Nikko. “So we’re all sharing with someone. I have dibs on the bed nearest the window, Cal!”

“Ah, well, now therein lies the catch,” admitted Maggie. “They’re not twin rooms.”

“What?” Nikko blinked in the sudden silence.

“Each room is a double, with a large double bed,” Maggie continued. “Two of them have sofa beds.”

“Dibs!” Nikko and Calvin called at once.

Maggie rolled her eyes and looked at Juliet, who shrugged with a smile, then at Solomon. “Okay, boys get the rooms with the sofa beds. The adults will take the one without. You are lucky to have beds at all: you have no idea how hard it is to find space for 6 people in a holiday town in France in the height of the holiday season on six hours notice!”

“What did I say?” Solomon protested, picking up on Maggie’s amused grin. “I didn’t say a word! Not a word!”

Maggie laughed and got out of the car. Unloading the bags and boxes took some time, but the hotel staff were happy to help and soon the team were meeting again on the terrace.

“It certainly is a beautiful view,” breathed Solomon, almost apologetically.

“Uh-huh,” agreed Maggie, suspiciously. She glanced at the man standing by her side and wondered if he realised just how much his son was like him. “Solomon Zond, I have known you since you and Haley met and there has never been an accommodation booked for you that you didn’t find some fault with, unless you booked it yourself. Don’t think she didn’t tell me!”

“There were fewer of us to book rooms for then,” mused Solomon, looking round for his son. “Did make it easy to keep tabs on everyone though.”

“They’ll be down soon, Solomon,” Vincent assured his friend. He leant back in the garden chair by the table. “Probably arguing over who gets the bed and who gets the sofa.”

“And who won that argument in your room?” Maggie enquired with a lopsided smile.

Vincent held up both hands in surrender and laughed. “I know my place.”

“He offered, I didn’t say no,” shrugged Solomon. “Where’s your roomie?”

Maggie waved a hand at the garden before them. “We were first down. She said she was going for a walk.”

Footsteps on the wooden decking heralded Nikko’s arrival. Solomon and Maggie turned as one, then looked expectantly at the space behind the youngest member of their team.

“What?” Nikko shrugged.

“Where’s Calvin?” Solomon asked his son. “Did you two fall out already?”

“Cal?” Nikko blinked. “Cal dumped his gear on the sofa bed and headed out. Said he was going for a walk in the garden.”

Solomon looked at Maggie, his barely suppressed grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “A walk you say?”

Maggie grinned back. “In the garden? Well, fancy that.”

Nikko looked from one to the other, then glanced at Vincent, who was studiously avoiding everyone’s gaze, his face as imperturbable as ever. “I’m just gonna go grab a glass of water.”

The footsteps receded. Solomon let loose the smile he’d been hiding.

“It’s you and Haley all over again,” murmured Maggie.

“Here’s hoping it ends better for them than for us,” replied Solomon.

****

Juliet leant back against the broad trunk of an evergreen tree. She wasn’t sure of the species – botany had never been her strongpoint – but the resinous scent and the sound of water bubbling away nearby in the warm evening air calmed her and helped her focus. She needed time to think. She had slept most of the journey, surrounded by the familiar sounds of her friends and colleagues mixed with the drone of the jet’s engines. Now at least, if she hadn’t had time to think then, she was alert enough to do so clearly.

She cast her mind back over the year so far, all the way back to the party where she and Anthony met. It was a Christmas party hosted by an old high school friend, and he introduced himself to her as a friend of that friend. They had danced and talked. Had she told him then that she worked for Professor Zond? She didn’t think so. The topic of work had barely come up at all. He had asked if she liked museums, then asked her to accompany him to the new exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. It was only once they were there in the midst of ostraca and papyri that she had mentioned how they had absorbed her attention as a child, making her determined to work out what they said. She had only been mildly daunted when, years later, her father had admitted that the many hieroglyphs and hieratic characters had already been decoded. From then on, they had talked about her studies and later her work in almost every conversation she could remember, sometimes rambling on for hours about this or that new paper or puzzling parchment that had made its way across her desk.

Had she discussed their work on the Ring of Truth? She didn’t think so. That was one topic she had always been careful to steer the conversation away from. She had sometimes used other, smaller, less secretive projects to do so though. Projects that she and Cal had worked on together, or that she had worked on alone, like her doctorate work. She had used the latter as an excuse for the long trip to Jerusalem with the team, just a week after meeting Anthony. He had assured her he would still be there when she got back and, well, he had been. Her return had been so much delayed, however, that some explanation was owing, even if much of it could be herded under the heading of the non-disclosure agreement she and the others had signed when taking up their post at the Veritas Foundation. She had told him some of what happened in Syria; certainly not everything. Had she told him about the room they found? The scrolls they’d had to leave behind, perhaps, but not how they found the room, surely. Whether from the perspective of Dorna chasing them or of Cal finding her after their kiss, it would not have been a wise topic to discuss with the man she had been on a handful of dates with at that point. A rustle of branches broke the thread of her thought and she turned.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Cal murmured, leaning back against the tree trunk next to her.

“Just thinking about Anthony,” sighed Juliet, wrapping her hands around her elbows.

“Ouch,” commented Calvin.

“Not like that,” replied Juliet, laughing despite herself.

“Like what then?”

Juliet shrugged. “Thinking about the conversations we’ve had: how one-sided they’ve been, at least in terms of work. He never liked to talk much about his job. Always found a way to steer the conversation back to what I was working on.”

“You’re worried you let something slip about the Ring?”

“Yes… No… Maybe?” Juliet shrugged.

“That certainly covers your options,” quipped Cal.

Juliet turned to face him. “I haven’t told him anything about any work we did that was directly linked to the Ring.”

Cal, hands in his jacket pockets, turned to face her. “But you’re worried you’ve told him… What? Something that links indirectly to the Ring?”

“Something that maybe we haven’t spotted the link in yet,” clarified Juliet. “Something we haven’t even looked at yet.”

Calvin looked down at Juliet, eyes narrowed in confusion. Suddenly his brow cleared. “The parchment.”

“We’ve been so busy working through the rest of the finds from that trip, the things we actually went there looking for, that we ignored the find we weren’t expecting. Sure we processed the records we took of the catacombs and the frescoes there, but that was just to try and get the place some protection and we didn’t even mention any of the hidden stuff. Then there were the Jerusalem finds and where they took us, and where we ended up after that and so on, and then Alaska happened and now this!” Juliet waved a hand at their surroundings. Her other hand came to rest on the trunk of the tree.

“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Cal soothed, his hands lifting automatically towards Juliet’s shoulders then stopping. One hand dropped back down to his pocket; the other drifted over to the trunk of the tree. “Look, if he’s Dorna, he knows anything you willingly tell him will be stuff that has nothing to do with the Ring. It’ll be everything round about that that he’ll be watching.”

“Yes, unless he knows something we don’t!” Juliet pointed out, her hand slipping a fraction forwards on the tree bark. “We never were sure how Dorna found us in Syria, or why they turned up when they did. What if we were never a part of the plan? What if they turned up there looking for something else, not us?”

Calvin was silent, searching Juliet’s face for an answer he knew he was going to hate. “It’s the Nabatean link, isn’t it?”

Juliet nodded. “Ever since I spotted the script was similar to the Elm Island tablet, I’ve been wondering, though.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No.”

Cal nodded. There was no need to ask if she was sure. Not about that. His shoulders relaxed and fell, and the hand on the tree fell forward with them. “What does he know about it?”

“That we brought it and a couple of other things back from the ruins we discovered. That it’s a scroll with writing we haven’t identified,” shrugged Juliet. The motion of her shoulders pushed the hand on the tree trunk upwards. When her shoulders fell, her hand did not. “That I said I would wait for you…” Juliet’s voice trailed off. Suddenly she was very aware of a hand resting very close to hers. She swallowed. “That I would wait until we could work on it together.”

Calvin knew, from his high school sciences, that there were many forces in this universe, but at that particular moment he couldn’t think of a single one strong enough to pull his eyes from Juliet’s. He felt a gentle thumb brush over his. “Does he know where it’s kept?”

“No,” Juliet breathed. Slowly, as slow as ice melting from view on a car windscreen, she felt tentative fingers intertwine with hers. She let her free hand tangle in the fabric of his open jacket.

Calvin let his head drop until his forehead rested on Juliet’s. “I know you want to do this right…”

“I want to try,” corrected Juliet. “If Tony turns out to be Dorna, I am perfectly okay with trying and failing, but if he’s not…”

“You’d rather know you did things right?”

“I was going to say: if he’s not, he’s still a jerk and I’d rather not give him ammunition; but I guess that works too.”

****

_ 6 ½ Months Ago – 6 days after the fall _

_Calvin and Juliet looked down at the array of boxes laid out on the desk in the order and position of removal. There were gaps where there had been an empty space in the cabinet. Sometimes the gap was filled with a note if the contents had been deemed too delicate to move. Juliet photographed everything as they uncovered it. Each box, its contents inside it, and especially its contents once moved outside the box, had just about as many photographs taken as one of the vainest Prom Queens on the night of the dance. There were several items of note: a gold ring, a seal, a jewelled necklace, a brooch. Each treasure was accompanied by a neat note identifying the item and the illustrious client it belonged to, along with the debt said item was apparently security for._

_“So this was some kind of safety deposit box system,” murmured Cal, after reading out the third such receipt. “Well, the Templars were into banking.”_

_“Not all of it,” replied Juliet, putting their camera to one side. “This one doesn’t have a note. Help me take it out.”_

_Cal held the box steady as Juliet carefully dislodged its contents. It was a solid cylinder, a brown so dark it was almost black, and had been wedged into the locked box diagonally._

_“One scroll case,” dictated Juliet. “Unknown origin and date. Feels like wood covered in embossed leather. Pattern on the leather is a stripe of geometrical decoration at the base, the top, and just below where the cylinder opens.”_

_Cal put down the dictaphone. “Can you open it?”_

_“It’s stuck,” frowned Juliet. She held out a hand to Calvin. “Give me a knife. Small and sharp will do. I think it’s just the oils out of the leather.” She took the proffered knife and carefully scored a neat line around the join of base and lid. “Here we are. Look at this.”_

_Calvin stepped closer, shining his flashlight down over her shoulder. He watched Juliet ease up the lid of the case, holding his breath when the inner scroll became visible. When he let out that breath, when the lid finally came free and Juliet placed it carefully on the desk, he saw a shiver run through her._

_“Hey, you okay?” Cal’s free hand reached out to steady Juliet’s as it returned to the scroll case, his fingers sliding through hers._

_Juliet flexed her fingers automatically, interweaving them with his, then slid her hand out of his grasp and up to the scroll peeking tantalisingly out of the top of the case. “I’m fine,” she lied. “This feels like parchment, fairly stable but I don’t know how it will stand up to being removed from the case. Pass me my gloves, please?”_

_Cal grabbed the pair of white cotton gloves Juliet had used to handle all the notes they had found thus far and handed them to their owner. With the cautious attention of a bomb defusal expert, Juliet edged the scroll out of its case. The dry, reasonably stable atmosphere of being inside a case that was inside a box that was inside a cabinet inside a secret room in a lost catacomb of the Knights Templar had done much to preserve the integrity of the parchment: it slid out of the wooden cylinder with ease. Juliet passed the case to Cal, who sat it on a free area of the desk and came back to Juliet with the flashlight, shining it over her shoulder onto the parchment. It unrolled right to left, and Juliet eased the roll open as far as one block of text._

_“Can you read it?” Cal asked her. “I can’t.”_

_“There’s something familiar about the characters,” Juliet admitted, “but no, I can’t read it. Maybe once we’re back in the lab with some reference materials. Even with the flashlight, the light in here isn’t the greatest.”_

_“D’you want to try the UV light?”_

_“Maybe once we’re back in the lab and can open it fully,” she agreed, aware that the tremor in her hands had resumed as soon as Cal returned with the light, but equally aware that this time he had not reached out to steady her._

_That was how it was then. She had pulled away from him the first time, and he had noticed. He wasn’t quite so close now either: not quite so much in her little bubble of personal space that had suddenly made an appearance just yesterday. Invisible boundaries had been drawn between them now, and a part of her was glad that he had spotted them without her having to spell it out. How could she explain that the mild attraction she had felt before now tied her to him like the ocean to the moon. If she were not with Anthony things might be different now, but right now her boyfriend was as sure a block between them as the vacuum of space between moon and planet. A block she intended to remove as soon as they got home, certainly, but a block nonetheless._


	17. “Important and urgent aren’t the same things…”

“So, what happened to you?” Nikko nudged as he and Cal followed a route around the top, interior side and, where possible, buildings of the ancient ramparts of the old quarter of the town.

“Hmm?” Cal responded, apparently focussing entirely on the earthworks and mediaeval masonry.

“Your disappearing act when we arrived,” Nikko elucidated, apparently paying absolutely no attention whatsoever to the task his father had allotted them. “Your bag is still lying on that sofa bed, by the way.”

“I went for a walk, Nikko,” replied Calvin, with a sigh. “It was a long flight and a cramped drive and I needed some air. Nothing else to it.”

“Okay,” conceded Nikko. “I mean, you’re right about the flight and, man, as much as the idea of my Dad in a minivan amuses me, all six of us, plus our luggage, in the same minivan is another matter! And it seems Juliet, at least, agreed with you on the needing some air front! Turns out she was out in the gardens at the same time as you! Came back just five minutes before you did. From the same direction too.”

“Is there a point to this?” Calvin asked, turning to Nikko. “Cause I’m not seeing the point in this conversation at all.”

“Just wondering if you bumped into each other out there, is all,” grinned Nikko, blithely continuing his stroll along the ramparts. Behind him he heard Cal’s footsteps catch up.

“It’s a big garden,” he said, watching the earthworks again. “She could have been anywhere.”

“Now, see, that’s not a no,” smirked his irksome companion. “And since it’s not a yes either, that tells me you’re trying to hide something.”

“Maybe I just enjoy irritating you for a change,” quipped Cal. “It’s the simple things in life, you know?”

“How much to you want to sleep tonight?” Nikko queried.

Calvin stopped and glared at Nikko. From long experience, he knew the threat was real, even if the kid could only pull it off for one night. He replayed the events of the evening in his mind and picked out the key points. At least the ones he was willing to tell Nikko. “Fine: we bumped into one another in the garden. We chatted for a little while. Nothing of any interest to you, just about that parchment we found in Syria. Then we went on our separate ways and I didn’t see her again until I got back to the house. Satisfied?”

Nikko narrowed his eyes in mock suspicion. He opened his mouth to speak and his pocket rang out the sound of the Indiana Jones theme tune. He held up a single index finger. “Hold that thought.” Nikko fished the phone out of his pocket. “Hi Dad!”

Calvin folded his arms and waited. The first few exchanges made it obvious Professor Zond was relaying a new set of instructions, which Nikko would no doubt take great pleasure in passing on. Their circuit of the ramparts was maybe two thirds complete, though, and once he had heard that detail get passed to the professor, he was fairly sure he could guess what those instructions would be.

“Dad says they’ll work their way round towards us and meet us at… uh… toor duh lah poo dree err.”

Calvin ignored the abysmal attempt at French pronunciation. He knew what Nikko meant. It was the tower at the end of the still visible part of the earthworks that made up the bulk of the ramparts. “Your father’s ringtone is the theme from Indiana Jones?”

“Who doesn’t love a bit of classic John Williams? What? You think I should have made it Star Wars? I gotta admit: you’d make a great C-3PO!”

****

“So what were you and Cal talking about in the garden?” Maggie asked, fastening the clasp on the small briefcase of preliminary samples and the equipment for taking them.

“What makes you think Cal and I were talking in the garden?” Juliet asked, without looking up from the camera in her hands.

“Solomon gets bored easily.”

This reply was so far from what she had been expecting, it actually made Juliet look up and round at her fellow scientist in utter confusion.

Maggie laughed. “We sent Vincent to tell you everyone was waiting.”

“What did Vincent say, exactly?” Juliet queried, still unwilling to admit anything.

“Oh, not much,” smiled Maggie. “Only that he didn’t think Anthony’s little surprise visit did him any favours.”

“Oh, uh…” Juliet’s brows wrinkled. Vincent’s cryptic and inscrutable remarks could be deemed charming. When Nikko was trying to get something out of him they could be highly amusing. Occasionally, they could even be lifesaving. Right now, they were worrying. “Well, he’s not wrong.”

“Is that a fact,” said Maggie, opening the door to the eleventh century tower and waving Juliet out. “You know, I was Haley’s best friend when she and Solomon met. Now if any man ever put a woman in need of a good listener it was Solomon Zond. Just so you know: I have had plenty practise.”

Juliet put the camera away and fished a town map out of her bag. “By the look of things the quickest route to the tower is straight up this street, through the square that’s more of a triangle, with a circle in the middle, past the town hall and look for a Rue de la Laine on the left. It should be about the third turning after the square.”

“All I’m saying,” Maggie continued, “is that if you ever need someone to talk to, about Anthony, Cal, or anything, you know where I’m spending my evenings this week.”

Juliet smiled. “Duly noted. We just… We were just...”

“Good listeners don’t judge,” added Maggie. “Your choices are your own. I’m just a sounding board. You want advice, I’ll do my best, but if you just want to vent, that’s okay too.”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Juliet replied, curls bouncing as she shook her head. “Not really. I mean, not right now. I mean…” She stopped and huffed out her breath in a sigh. “Cal and I think Tony might be Dorna.”

Maggie’s eyebrows rose. “Are you sure?”

“No.” Juliet shook her head again and resumed walking. “The day before yesterday, Cal mentioned something he’d overheard. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, then the whole ‘surprise visit’ thing happened and ever since I’ve been going over things in my head trying to spot anything I’ve missed or any patterns that don’t add up.”

“And?”

“And do you remember when Dorna nearly found Cal and I in that set of catacombs in Syria?”

“You hid in a Crusader bank vault, the way I remember it,” nodded Maggie. “That was where you found that parchment you two were arguing over, wasn’t it?”

Juliet nodded. “I don’t think they were there for us.”

****

_ 6 ½ Months Ago – 6 days after the fall _

_“Do you think they’re still out there?” Calvin murmured. He edged the last of the boxes back into its original resting place and turned round. Juliet was engrossed in studying the scroll of parchment they had discovered. Calvin’s frown deepened. “I thought we agreed to look at that together when we got home?”_

_“I know, we will, it’s just…” Juliet shrugged, palms circling outward in a gesture as much of impatience at her own memory as frustration at their current situation. “Something’s bugging me. Something in this is familiar. Like I should know it, but I don’t. I’ve been over and over every script I can think of and none of them are right, but I’m sure I’ve seen this, or something like this, somewhere before!”_

_Cal raised a hand to place on her shoulder, but stopped and let it fall again. “Hey, we’ll figure it out,” he said, his voice as soothing as he could manage. “We’re right in the heart of the lands where writing first really took off, at least as far as we know. A lot of the scripts from this area have similarities and there are a_ lot _of scripts from round here!”_

_Juliet edged the parchment back into a roll, and back into its holder. “You’re right, I know, it’s just…”_

_“What?” Cal asked, a flicker of concern tracing its way across his face._

_“Ugh! I don’t know! I don’t know!” Juliet sighed heavily, the now closed scroll case still in her grasp. “If I knew, maybe it might give me a hint to where I’ve seen the similar script. I mean, with all the papers we’ve worked on and read and glanced at, it could be anything: it doesn’t even have to be something we’ve handled ourselves; but there’s this nagging little voice at the back of my mind saying it’s something important!”_

_“Does it say it’s something urgent?” Cal enquired._

_Juliet looked up at him and blinked in confusion. “What?”_

_“Important and urgent aren’t the same things,” he continued. “Your birthday is important, but it isn’t urgent because it’s not until September. So does your nagging little voice think this scroll is urgent or just important?”_

_Juliet blinked again, frowning at the far side of the room. “Important,” she decided, eventually. “Definitely important. Not so urgent.”_

_“Then we take it with us. We look after it. And we will work it out at home,” said Calvin, watching her. Juliet’s head never turned his way once. “Okay?”_

_She nodded and he turned his attention back to the cabinet. Behind him, he heard a shuffling of feet._

_“That’s not where that box goes,” mused Juliet, the frown so obvious in her voice Cal could picture her face without turning._

_“I’m taller than you,” he shrugged in dubious explanation. The look on Juliet’s face when he glanced over his shoulder at her silence told him just how dubious. He decided further explanation might be good for his health. “I spotted something at the back of the… er… spot for this one. Looks like a button, if I can just…”_

_There was a click and a gust of cold air wrapped itself around their ankles. Cal removed his hand and stood back. The bottom half of the cabinet had sunk down into the stone floor._

_“I did not see a crack there, did you?” Cal asked, dropping down to examine the newly visible edge of the floor. He grabbed the flashlight Juliet was handing him and aimed its beam into the chilly depths. There was another tunnel, heading who knew where, leading in one definite direction from the room. It could only be an escape route: there were no steps leading up to them, only a drop of a few feet onto solid rock leading out._

_“So, bearing in mind that Dorna just dropped in on us yesterday and we’ve been here a week nearly and still hadn’t found an end to the tunnels out there before we found our way in here,” mused Cal, shining the light up their newly discovered exit. “On a scale of one to ten, one being no chance whatsoever, how likely do you think it is that Dorna are still wandering around out there?”_

_“Well, there are usually more of them than there are of us,” considered Juliet, “so I think I’m going with nine.”_

_“I think you’re probably right.”_

_“You sure we can’t take anything else from here?”_

_“That’s the only thing we found in its own case,” shrugged Cal. “If we close everything up bar the base before we go, it’ll be as safe as we can make it. The base of the cabinet probably has some mechanism like the doors where it closes on its own. I can’t see Dorna hanging around trying to figure out how to open it, can you?”_

_Juliet shook her head. “Let’s get packed up then.”_

****

Vincent Siminou was many things and had been many more. Right now he was a colleague and protector of the man by his side. He was also that man’s friend and confidante. In the years that he had worked with and watched over Solomon Zond he had come to respect the intelligence, tenacity and integrity that radiated throughout his person. From his conversations with de Molay, he had expected as much. He had expected a great leader, an inspired thinker, perhaps even a warrior. With his training, Solomon was certainly further along the road of the latter than most archaeologists. He had been aware of Nikko. De Molay had tasked him with keeping an eye on both father and son, even from the start of his mission, but it was not until Nikko joined the team, three years ago, that de Molay had told him all the circumstances of Haley’s disappearance.

With de Molay, everything was need to know. That was, Vincent supposed, how he had survived playing both sides so long. Why, exactly, the Zonds were of such great interest to him, Vincent could make an educated guess at. He knew he didn’t know everything, far from it, but he knew enough. He also knew enough to know that if Dorna caught wind of Nikko’s awakening abilities, they wouldn’t be quite so happy to sit back and wait for Solomon to lead them to the Ring. With Nikko in their grasp, the only use they would have for Solomon or the rest of his team would be as leverage. Vincent also knew that it was not Solomon who seemed to be leading anyone to the Ring. The Alaskan artefact was the first piece of the Ring the team had found in almost two years, and only then at the end of a long and drawn out scavenger hunt that only ever seemed to advance whenever Nikko rejoined the group. The last piece of the ring they had found before that had been the product of work Nikko had been a part of. The clue that sent them to Alaska had cropped up during spring break. They had returned from Alaska right in time to watch Nikko graduate. Now here they were, following the sparse breadcrumbs that seemed to follow the boy around like a stray cat.

The sound of distant bickering heralded Nikko and Cal’s arrival long before either Vincent or Solomon could see them. Internally, Vincent placed a silent bet.

“Hey,” Cal called, waving. “Maggie and Juliet aren’t far behind us. We spotted them when we turned this way back there.”

Vincent and Solomon peered round the end of the earthworks to look where Cal had indicated.

“You didn’t wait on them?” Solomon frowned, glancing from the elder to the younger of the two.

“Wasn’t much point in making them walk the distance twice,” grinned Nikko. Silently Vincent counted down. Nikko backed away, beckoning for the others to follow. “We found something.”

And there it was. Vincent smiled: he had won his bet.


	18. "Run!"

“It’s a way in!” Nikko pointed out, arms waving wildly in the direction of the small wooden door. “It’s what we’ve been looking for!”

“And we will investigate it tomorrow,” his father sighed. “It’s not going anywhere. Plus, we don’t know what we’ll find when we get in there, or how long it will take to explore it. It might take five minutes, it might take us all day, and I for one would rather face the latter with a good night’s sleep and a decent breakfast inside me!”

Juliet couldn’t help but agree with the professor, but no matter how much she tried, sleep just would not come. Over and over, her mind replayed conversations. Conversations with Tony, conversations with Cal, conversations with Nikko about Tony and Cal, and most of all, conversations that mentioned in any way the parchment scroll they had discovered in Syria. It seemed that she was only just beginning to doze when the soft light of dawn seeped round through the shutters and round the curtains, bringing the light, airy sound of birdsong as the dawn chorus began.

It was after eight when Maggie shook Juliet awake. She was fully dressed and looking down at her roommate with an odd expression. In the fog of fatigue, Juliet found she couldn’t tell if the look on Maggie’s face conveyed pity or concern.

“I’m up, I’m awake,” Juliet assured her colleague, feeling neither.

“When you didn’t wake up while I was getting ready, I figured you could do with the lie in,” explained Maggie, conveying a cup of coffee from the bedside table to Juliet’s hand. “However, when Nikko made it down to breakfast before you, I told Solomon I’d see if everything was alright. Figured you might need an extra nudge though.”

“Thank you,” sighed Juliet, sitting up and sipping the coffee. “Is everyone waiting?”

“Are you kidding me?” Maggie laughed. “Nikko was only just sitting down when I left and we all know how much that boy can eat!”

“Especially when it’s already paid for!” Juliet agreed with a smile. “And especially when it’s a buffet!”

“What about you? Feel like eating? I could go bring something up.”

Juliet shook her head. “Just tell the Professor I’ll be down in ten, fifteen minutes, please. Twenty tops.”

“I believe I can do that,” nodded Maggie, still watching Juliet with that odd, undefinable expression. “And don’t worry: he’s in no rush. Take your time.”

As Maggie turned to go, a thought crossed Juliet’s mind. “Maggie,” she called, waiting for the older woman to stop and turn back before continuing. “Did you tell him? Professor Zond, I mean. About Tony?”

“No,” replied Maggie, shaking her head. “Do you want me to?”

“No,” Juliet answered, copying Maggie’s gesture. “At least, not yet. Not until…”

“Until you’re sure?” Maggie offered. “Might be too late by then.”

“Not until I’ve had a chance to talk to him. I need to call him. Today. I can call him before we leave…”

Maggie cut her off with a raised hand. “Time difference! Unless your boy’s an extremely early riser, you might want to leave it until a little later in the day. Say five hours or so!”

Juliet’s shoulders slumped. “You’re right,” she sighed, the hands cradling the now empty coffee cup dropping to her lap. “I’ll call him when we get back.”

“Have you thought about what you’re going to say?” Maggie enquired, folding her arms and watching the young doctor patiently.

“Only all night,” quipped Juliet with a shrug.

Maggie paused for a moment, waiting to see if Juliet was going to expand on that answer. When it soon became obvious that she wasn’t, Maggie nodded and turned to the door. “I’ll tell Solomon you’re on your way.”

“Thank you, Maggie!” Juliet called after her. As the door swung closed she spotted a hand raised in silent acknowledgement.

Twenty five minutes later, Juliet found her way into the dining room. It was empty but for one person. The sudden cessation of her footsteps made him look up. Calvin met her gaze across the not so crowded room. As Juliet approached his table he rose to leave.

“Don’t go,” she murmured. “Please. I need to talk to someone. I need to talk to you.”

Cal picked up his empty mug. “Coffee? I could do with a refill. You get your food, I’ll get the drinks?”

****

Tunnels. Why was it always tunnels?

Nikko squeezed himself through the child sized doorway, the camera on his safety helmet, which of course his Dad had packed, held safely out of the way of walls and ceiling. He could crawl on hands and knees well enough, if he kept his head down, but right now he’d rather see where he was going. He brushed more cobwebs out of his face.

“Remind me why I had to go first?” Nikko called through the coms.

“You’re the smallest, bar Juliet, you’re the one who found it,” replied his father, verbally ticking off points on a list. “Oh yeah, and you offered.”

“Any offer made before caffeine is inadmissible!” Nikko called back.

“Tough!” Solomon responded, the grin absolutely obvious in his voice.

“Ugh! You’ll be pleased to hear it opens out a bit after a few metres,” reported Nikko.

“You don’t sound very pleased,” replied Vincent.

“The spiders seem to have taken it as a challenge,” groaned the team’s youngest member, swiping away even more cobwebs.

One by one, the team made their way into the tunnel. The only person left behind was Maggie, tracking each of them on her laptop and watching the live camera feeds from each helmet. Four out of five showed highly unflattering views of the person in front. Gradually, the tunnel grew, first to just about a metre high, then to two metres. Cobwebs still festooned the funnel of darkness stretching out before Nikko. they reflected the light from the flashlight on his helmet as if they were made from spun silver and moon dust.

“Ugh! It’s like Shelob’s lair in here!” Nikko complained, loudly.

“Film version or book version?” Vincent asked from right behind him.

The young man jumped, then flapped his hands madly in front of his face. “Dude!” Nikko yelled, spitting cobwebs. “Don’t do that!”

If Vincent laughed, it was swallowed up by the web-laden walls. In the relative comfort of the minivan, Maggie smiled. Almost instantaneously, the smile dropped from her face and she zoomed in on Nikko’s camera feed.

“Nikko, freeze,” Maggie ordered, watching the image still as her order was obeyed. “Good, now look to your right. Your other right, Nikko. Do you see it?”

There was a moment of silence that hung in the air like an eight ball over a side pocket. The camera feed moved slightly this way and that. “I see it!” Nikko called back, charging forward with the unassailable impetuosity of youth.

Vincent was, predictably, the next to move, followed by Solomon. With gloved hands and archaeological brushes – “Really Dad? All this time?” – the three men cleared the cobwebs from a door even older than the one they had entered by. Maggie watched the combined progress through Cal’s camera: the only one neither too close to get the whole picture, nor pointing in the wrong direction. It was hard to tell in the limited light, but this door seemed a darker wood than the first: older and tougher too. The ironmongery of the lock required a key, a locksmith or an expert lockpicker. The first two options were out of the question, but they still had Vincent. Soon the door was open and the group trailed through.

There were fewer cobwebs beyond the door, possibly because it fitted its opening better and had a keyhole cover rusted into place on the inner side. It made progress more pleasant but, without the reflections amplifying the light, darker. Vincent was the first to flick on his hand-held flashlight.

“Is that a wall, up ahead?” Solomon wondered aloud, squinting into the dull light and following Nikko and Vincent down a short flight of steps.

“A junction, I think,” murmured Vincent.

“So who goes right, who goes left?” Nikko asked, looking over his shoulder. His eyes glanced back up the group. “I think Juliet and I…”

“Do you think they make snickerdoodles over here?” Maggie asked with a sigh. “I always get peckish watching pointless arguments.”

“Nikko, Vincent: you’re with me,” Solomon announced. “We’ll take the right branch. Calvin, Juliet: you two take the left branch. Keep in contact. If we lose the signal, we won’t know it until Maggie doesn’t reply; and if you do lose the signal you mark your point and you come back. Last thing we need is for some of us to get lost in here!”

“Oh-kay then,” breezed Nikko, watching his father take the lead. Vincent loomed out of the shadows and motioned for Nikko to precede him. Nikko frowned, then took the hint. He glanced back over his shoulder to where Cal was watching them go and Juliet was watching something else entirely, lost in thought. “Chin up, Juliet!” Nikko called. “Remember Maggie can see everything you can!” He watched Juliet’s head snap up, eyes wide, and chuckled to himself, following his father into the depths of the ancient earthworks.

Juliet smiled a cookie-cutter smile at Cal and waved a hand at the other branch of the tunnel. “After you.”

****

They had been walking, albeit slowly, for nearly half an hour, checking in and reporting back to each other constantly, when the tunnel turned an unexpected bend to the right. Juliet brushed a strand of hair out of her face and took a swig of water from her bottle.

“Hey Maggie,” Cal called, “where exactly are we? This tunnel is bending away from the line of the wall.”

“Calvin, you’ve been out of line with the wall for a while now,” Maggie replied. “You must be deep enough to cross under roads and utilities, though, if the tunnel’s heading right.”

“There are a few more steps down ahead,” Calvin admitted, “and it has been feeling like we were on a decline for most of the way.”

“Well, judging your direction from the line your tracker has been tracing on my systems, if you turn ninety degrees right, you’ll be heading under the Boulevard de l’Europe and out towards the hospital and the Vosges mountains. These coms have a good range on them, but I can’t guarantee we’ll get a clear signal with hospital machinery and mountains in the way.”

“Cal, Juliet?” Professor Zond’s voice crackled through the coms. “Any problems, with communications or anything, you come straight back, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear, Professor,” Juliet answered, fixing her water bottle back in the side pocket of her pack. “At least this branch is a bit wider after the turn.”

Juliet let her hand drop to her side and found another there, waiting for hers. Cal’s fingers brushed against hers in a silent question, neither heard nor seen by the cameras on their safety helmets. She interlaced her hand with his, a smile creeping onto her face that was far more genuine than the last, and together, they stepped over the threshold.

****

_ 6 ½ Months Ago – 7 days after the fall. _

_Juliet had no idea what time it was, but her body was fairly sure it was well past breakfast time. They had walked through the night, their packs, lighter for the lack of a tent, settled uncomfortably on their bent backs. This tunnel may have been built by Templars, but either they were a lot shorter than in their pictures or they had some reason to ensure that anyone following the secret passage could not stand upright._

_“Let’s take a break,” suggested Cal, “It doesn’t sound like anyone’s following us. We would have heard that door open again.”_

_“We certainly heard it close!” Juliet muttered, remembering the hollow, grinding thud that had reverberated through the tunnel like the sudden drop of a sarcophagus lid, sealing the occupants firmly into place. She glanced down to where Cal had stretched out on the tunnel floor. “Tired?”_

_“Sore back,” he replied, wincing. “Why make the secret catch so high only a tall person could see it, then make the tunnel so low only a child could walk through it without bending?”_

_Juliet, her own back feeling barely any better, lay down beside him, her arms tucked under her head. “Safety? You could only find the catch if you knew where it was, and once in the tunnel you couldn’t stand and fight?”_

_“Like how spiral staircases always give the advantage to the person coming down them,” Cal mused. “Yeah, makes sense, I guess.”_

_“Where do you think this leads?” Juliet asked, handing Cal a granola bar._

_“Who knows,” Cal shrugged. “I think we’re heading north. We were last time I checked the compass. Beyond that, it’s fifty-fifty whether this leads out or to another Templar hideout.”_

_“I’m putting my money on ‘out’. That door seemed very decidedly one-way. If this were taking us to another Templar building, don’t you think they’d make this an entrance as well as an exit?”_

_Cal sat up and reached for his water bottle. In the dim light of their two flashlights, Juliet spotted a shadow on Cal’s back. She reached up and touched the mark. Her fingers came away dark with blood._

_“You’ve opened up one of the cuts on your back,” she murmured. “Take off your shirt and let me put a dressing on it.”_

_“It’s fine,” he replied. “I’m fine. It was just the weird angle and the pack hitting the roof of this place.”_

_“You’re not fine, you’re bleeding,” Juliet snapped. “At best, if you leave it, the shirt will get stuck in the clot and when you do take it off the damage will be worse!”_

_“Fine,” he huffed. He reached up to pull the shirt over his head and winced. That was a movement he hadn’t tried since before the fall and, it appeared, would not be trying again for a while. “Argh, can I get a little more light here, please?”_

_Juliet sat up and turned her flashlight onto the buttons of the shirt. It wasn’t his usual choice for this sort of journey, but it was all they could get on him after the fall. He always had one neat shirt in his pack, just in case, but only one. Juliet watched him reach up to remove the now opened shirt and wince._

_“Here, let me,” she said, handing him the torch then moving back to peel the fabric off his shoulders and, carefully, off the newly reopened cut on his back. “It’s not too bad: it’s the deepest one, so just the last to heal. Everything else seems to be holding together okay. I’ll need a small dressing out of my first aid kit and a couple of alcohol wipes.”_

_“Yay, my favourite!” Cal joked, rummaging in the front pocket of Juliet’s pack for the kit. “On the bright side, at least down here, no one can hear you scream!”_

_“Er, I can, so try not to, please!” Juliet threw back, taking the supplies he passed her. In all fairness, he hadn’t screamed the first time she cleaned the wound either, though she was fairly sure his teeth had been clenched together so hard they would have dented metal. “There: that should do for now. This tunnel can’t be too long if it was meant for emergency use. We haven’t exactly spotted any signs of water or rest spots. Once we’re out of here we can find some sort of transport and get it looked at properly.”_

_“The joys of archaeology: we spend half our time trying to get into a hole in the ground and the other half trying to get out!” Cal trilled, shrugging the stained shirt back on and buttoning it up. “Come on: we’ve walked through the night. It can’t be much farther now.”_

****

They had walked through what was left of the morning and the tunnel still showed no signs of stopping.

“Maggie, can you still hear us?” Juliet called through the coms.

“Little bit crackly, but you’re still there,” said the voice in her ear. “Once the boys are back, they’re going to follow you. Their tunnel was blocked off, although they did spot a route up to the tower.”

“Just watch out, you two,” said the Professor’s paternal tones. “If the strata at our end was unstable enough to collapse, you might find the same thing at yours, and the rockfall we encountered looked recent.”

“Increased haulage traffic perhaps?” Cal wondered aloud. “Maybe some localised infrastructure works.”

“Could be,” agreed Professor Zond. “Could also be age and decay. All I’m saying is watch your step.”

“We’ll be fine, Professor,” Cal assured his mentor. “There haven’t been any signs…”

A groaning creak killed the words in Calvin’s throat. Together, he and Juliet looked back at the source of the noise, then forward into the unknown. He looked down and met Juliet’s eye. He saw the word forming on her lips even as it did on his own.

“Run!”


	19. “You had to say it!”

“You had to say it!” Juliet muttered in between coughs. Rock dust filled the passage, stinging eyes and throats alike.

“I know: I should know better by now!” Cal replied. He took a swig of water and poured some over his dust covered face.

“Careful: we don’t know how long we’ll be stuck down here,” Juliet reminded him. “Maggie, you still with us?”

Not even a crackle of static filled the waiting silence. Juliet looked at Cal, but he shook his head. Nothing.

“Now what?” Cal asked. “Stay here and wait for them to come get us or follow this and see if it leads us out of here?”

“If it doesn’t, we can always come back,” shrugged Juliet. “Come on.”

“At least…”

“Don’t!” Juliet snapped. “Whatever you were going to say, don’t!”

****

“What have you got, Maggie?” Solomon demanded, stepping up into the minivan beside her.

“I have their last position and a rough idea of the direction they were headed in,” she replied, typing furiously. “Other than that, nothing. No matter what tricks I try, I can’t boost their signal from this end. It’s just vanished. They’ve just vanished.”

“Their coms could have been damaged by the rockfall,” suggested Nikko.

“Let us hope not,” countered Vincent. “Anything that managed to hit their coms would also have managed to hit them. Maggie, how was their signal before the collapse?”

“Weak,” answered Maggie. “A small tunnel collapse wouldn’t have been enough to take it out, though.”

“So it was a major collapse then,” nodded Solomon. “Where? Show me.”

“What are you thinking?” Vincent enquired, watching Solomon settle himself in the driver’s seat and start the van.

“That maybe getting closer will be enough to pick up their signal again.”

“I’ll go see what the damage is inside,” suggested Nikko. “Maybe we can dig through to them.”

“What? You take a course on mining or tunnelling when I wasn’t looking? No!” Solomon shot back. “We have enough to worry about with Calvin and Juliet stuck underground without adding you to the mix, Nikko. You could just bring the place down on you too!”

“I’ll go with him, Solomon,” offered Vincent, placing a hand on Nikko’s shoulder. “We’ll be careful.”

Solomon’s jaw tightened, but he nodded, once. Vincent and Nikko closed the van door and stepped back, Nikko raising a hand to wave as the vehicle drove off. Once it was out of sight, Nikko switched his coms off and looked at Vincent.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Vincent switched his own coms off and raised an eyebrow. “That depends, Nikko: What are you thinking?”

Nikko narrowed his eyes, scrutinising his mentor’s face. He gave up. Vincent never gave anything away that he didn’t want to. “I’m thinking I might have the perfect skill set for this.”

“Then no, I am not thinking what you are thinking,” answered Vincent. Before he could be questioned further, he turned to the tiny door and waved a hand at it. “After you.”

****

“You okay?” Solomon asked, glancing over at Maggie’s silent frown.

“When I said we needed to give them some time alone together, this was not what I had in mind,” she replied, still focussed on the laptop.

“Hey, I was going to keep Nikko with me, anyway,” replied Solomon. “None of us could have predicted the tunnels would pick today to collapse, or where they’d come down. It could just as easily have been the three of us blocked off instead of Cal and Juliet.”

“I know,” murmured Maggie. “I know.”

“Doesn’t help, though?”

“Not as such, no. Not so much as finding them.”

Solomon nodded and turned right, following the route Maggie had pointed out before they left. “Then let’s go find them.”

****

_ 6 ½ Months Ago – 7 days after the fall _

_Stepping from the dark, cool tunnel into the bright sun of the Syrian sky, even with the mingled white and grey of clouds veiling it, stung Juliet’s eyes. The temperature was warmer, but not by much. Winter still held sway here. She looked at Cal. His dusty, bloody shirt was undoubtedly beyond repair, but its wearer seemed okay._

_“Any idea where we are?”_

_Cal looked up from the map in his hands. “If this is the river I think it is,” he replied, nodding at the white water splashing over rocks before them. “Then Grgis is about four and a half kilometers that way.”_

_Juliet looked in the direction he pointed. “I guess we’re going to Grgis then.”_

****

“Anything?” Solomon murmured, pulling in to the first widening of the road since they started heading out into the valley. A road led up the hill to the right, the mountain, really.

“Yes, Solomon, I got their signal back ten minutes ago and decided not to tell you,” snapped Maggie without looking up.

Solomon put a gentle hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We’ll get them back, Maggie. We always do.”

“Not always,” muttered Maggie. The words were barely out when she felt the hand on her shoulder tighten just a little. She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I’m sorry, Solomon. That was uncalled for.”

“She was your friend before she was my wife,” murmured Solomon softly. “It’s not like she isn’t right at the front of my mind every time we have a situation like this.”

“Haley’s been at the front of my mind a lot recently,” sighed Maggie, watching the sparse traffic roll by on the valley road.

“I know what you mean,” smiled Solomon. “At least Calvin won’t have to brave the disapproving parents like I did. Do you remember how much her dad hated me at first?”

“What do you mean ‘at first’?” Maggie laughed back. “That old man hated you until his dying day! You were never good enough for his little angel!”

“Clearly he didn’t know what his ‘little angel’ got up to in college with her best friend!”

“Oh, he knew: he just blamed me for all of it. I was a terrible influence, he said!”

Solomon laughed. Haley’s father had been a terror far greater than all of Dorna combined, even after he had walked his daughter down the aisle and watched her marry Solomon. He had only softened towards his son-in-law when Nikko came along and, even then, not by much.

Maggie edged the laptop round to face Solomon. She pointed out a few marks on the map. “This is where we lost their signal. If we assume their tunnel ran straight, and I know we have no evidence for that, and factor a movement rate of about four kilometers per hour, this moving marker is where they would be. If the tunnel doesn’t run straight, they could be anywhere within the circle.”

“If you were digging a tunnel out of the town, where would you take it?” Solomon mused. “It would be somewhere this side of the river, surely.”

“Most likely the mountains,” shrugged Maggie, “but even then we can’t be sure what side they’ll come out on, or even what side of the border. It was different when those tunnels were built.”

A bleep sounded from the machine on Maggie’s lap, capturing their attention instantly.

“We’ve got them!” Maggie exclaimed, a smile breaking out on her face like sunshine through clouds.

“Calvin, Juliet, can you hear us?” Solomon called out through the coms. A crackle was his only reply. He looked at Maggie.

“Their positions are both moving,” she said, in answer to his unspoken question. “It’s just the coms.”

“Signal could still be poor,” shrugged Solomon, switching his own coms back on. “Let’s give it some time. Hey Vincent, Nikko: we’ve picked up their signal and their moving up into the mountains. Maggie and I are going to see if we can find an exit to the tunnel at this end. If we can, we’ll let you know.”

“Are they okay, Dad?” Nikko’s voice came back through his earpiece.

“They’re moving, that’s all we know,” replied Solomon. “Their coms don’t seem to be working, yet. Are you okay?”

“We’re fine here, Solomon,” Vincent answered. “Just let us know where you need us.”

****

“You okay?” Cal asked Juliet as they climbed another set of stairs cut into the rock.

“Mm?” Juliet looked up and missed her footing on the uneven, timeworn steps. Cal caught her. “Thanks. What did you say? I was miles away.”

“I asked if you were okay,” repeated Cal, turning back to the stairs. “You’ve been quiet.”

“Just thinking,” shrugged Juliet. She stopped climbing and looked up at Cal. “I’m going to call Tony once we’re back at the hotel.”

Calvin stopped climbing and stepped back down a few steps until he was on a level with Juliet. “Okay.”

“I’m going to ask him why he came to the foundation, why he came in and how he got in without anyone letting him in,” she blurted.

“He’s gonna say the door was open,” murmured Cal. “You know what he’ll say to the rest.”

“If he does, I’ll know he’s lying: none of us would accidentally leave the door open,” Juliet pointed out. “And I’m going to end it with him. If he asks why, I’ll tell him he crossed a line when he came snooping around my work.”

Calvin shook his head. “Don’t. Don’t tell him that. If he thinks we suspect him, he might try and get the papyrus before we get back.”

“He’s going to want a reason, Cal,” argued Juliet.

“So tell him the reason,” shrugged Cal. “He hates me already and I can’t say I care much what his opinion of me is. Tell him you want to be with me.”

“Are you sure?” Juliet asked, trying to keep her eyes on his and her hands by her sides.

“Are you?”

Juliet felt fingertips light as feathers trace their way over the back of her hands and up her arms. She stepped into his arms, reaching up to cradle his face in her hands. After last time, she needed him to know she meant this. “I’m sure.”

Cal searched Juliet’s eyes. He knew they would get there eventually, but eventually didn’t tell him how many times she’d break his heart first, and it had already happened once. He nodded, closing his arms around her.

“Cal, Juliet? Do you read me?” Professor Zond’s voice crackled through the coms, breaking the silence that had descended around them like a curtain cutting them off from their surroundings. The curtain lifting, they broke apart.

“We’re here Professor,” Juliet answered, her voice only a little shaky.

****

They had been back at the hotel for half an hour: long enough for Juliet to wash the last of the rock dust out of her hair and find some clean clothes. Maggie had said she’d be downstairs, out of her way, if she wanted to make any phone calls. Nobody was going to interrupt her. So why was she staring at the phone in front of her instead of dialling Tony’s number? She thought back to the last time she had told Cal she would break up with Tony. Looking back, she wondered how she could have been so easily manipulated. At the time, though, she had no reason to see Anthony Blake as anyone to be afraid of, and how could he have known her reason for meeting him that day. She had chosen a quiet little coffee place, picking out a two seater table where she would be opposite him. Everything should have gone smoothly to plan. It wasn’t like she had never dumped a guy before.

It hadn’t gone to plan, though. He had turned up distracted and disturbed by something. When she had, naturally, asked him if he was okay, it had all come tumbling out: his mother was in hospital, maybe dying; his boss was pushing him to get his sales numbers up; he didn’t know what he would do without her; he had missed her so much. He hadn’t gone as far then as to say he loved her. He had saved that for the next time she had tried to end the relationship. Then there had been the fight with Cal. Maybe she had broken his heart that day, but she’d broken her own too. After that, it had just been one thing after another until she and Cal could barely be in the same room without fighting.

Juliet looked down at the phone in her hands again and dialled the number. It connected. It rang. It was answered.

“Hi Anthony,” said Juliet, her voice utterly devoid of emotion. “We need to talk.”


	20. "Cheese mends all ills."

By the time Juliet descended the stairs, the team was gathered in the dining room. Being the only guests, they had been allowed to eat together there provided they supplied the food and cleaned the rubbish away afterwards. Admittedly, the plates were limited to paper ones, and the cutlery was plastic, but the great thing about pizza was that it didn’t need cutlery. In the case of Nikko, it didn’t appear to need a plate either. Juliet laughed a little at the Professor fussing over his son’s blatant lack of manners, and those with their back to her turned round.

“Hey, Juliet, come grab some of this before my bottomless pit of a son devours the lot!” Solomon called, waving a paper plate at Nikko who, reluctantly, rolled his eyes and took it. “Didn’t know what you felt like so there’s pepperoni, three cheese, four seasons – Maggie insisted – and a Hawaiian.”

“Pineapple does not belong on pizza!” Nikko insisted, grabbing another slice of pepperoni. “And I don’t even know what half the stuff on the four seasons one is!”

“I’ll half a slice with you and you can find out,” laughed Maggie. She looked round to Juliet. “Any preferences?”

“Cheese mends all ills,” grinned Juliet, sitting down opposite a silent Cal, who hadn’t taken his eyes off her from the moment she entered the room. She looked up at him and smiled then looked down the table to the others. “I’ve broken up with Tony, Anthony,” she corrected herself. “But I think at least some of us should return as soon as possible and take a look at that parchment Cal and I brought back from Syria. I, we, think Tony might be Dorna, and that Dorna might be after that parchment.”

An icy silence settled on the group, all laughter suddenly frozen in place. Professor Zond put down the slice of pizza he had just lifted. “Are you sure?”

“Well, no,” Juliet shrugged, “but if we’re wrong there’s an awful lot of coincidences piling up around that parchment.”

“We think,” said Calvin, leaning forward, “that when Dorna nearly caught up with us in those catacombs, it wasn’t because they were following us: they were after the parchment.”

“And Anthony knows we have the parchment?” Vincent asked, though it sounded more like a statement.

“Yes,” Juliet nodded. “I told him about it. Well, not really about it. Not much, anyway: just that it was one of the finds on that trip and that we hadn’t been able to decipher it yet. And we talked about how frustrated I was that I couldn’t figure it out on my own and I’d agreed to wait on Cal because we found it together, but then when I was there, he was gone and when he was there, I was busy with my PhD! I say we ‘talked’ but really it was more a case of I vented and he listened. I had no idea, at the time, that the scroll was important, or that Anthony was Dorna. I’m still not sure if he’s Dorna! I’m so sorry, Professor!”

“And you put this all together when, exactly?” Professor Zond enquired, choosing each word carefully.

Cal looked at Juliet. She nodded and shrugged in one eloquent gesture.

“Last night in the garden,” he answered. “We wanted to talk to Tony first, though.”

“What? You wanted to give the guy a heads up or something, Calvin?” Professor Zond shot back, the reins on his temper visibly loosening.

“No, not like that, I…”

“I wanted to see if he would lie to me,” Juliet cut in, her voice rising to match the Professor’s. “And I wanted to tell him we’re through!”

“And give him a reason not to bother waiting around for an easy way in with you!”

“I didn’t think…”

“No, you didn’t!” Solomon pushed his plate away and stood up. “I’ll go call the airfield. Start packing as soon as you’re done here!”

Vincent, who had barely moved when Solomon stormed off, carefully folded one hand over the other on the table before him. “Does Anthony have any reason to suspect you think he is working for Dorna?”

Juliet relaxed a little and shook her head. “I told him I was in love with someone else.”

Vincent nodded once, as if Juliet had just said her favourite colour was blue. “Direct. Clear. I take it this was after you asked him about his little visit the other day?”

“How?” Cal blinked and frowned.

“What else would Juliet expect him to lie about,” explained Vincent smoothly. “Well?”

“It was after,” Juliet nodded. “I hope you don’t mind, but I said you were still trying to work out how he got in.”

Vincent raised an eyebrow. “Then we had better hope he is as ignorant of my identity as I am of his! What was his answer?”

“He said the door hadn’t quite latched,” replied Juliet, picking at the crust of her pizza. “I knew that was a lie because…”

“Because I’ve trained you all to close it properly, and set the system to alert us if you don’t,” finished Vincent. He nodded again. “Very well. I do not believe you would have alerted him to your suspicions. Indeed, he may be more likely to use this as an excuse to pay you more visits and attentions to try and ‘win you back’. Excuse me, I will go speak with Solomon. Finish your meal.”

Pepperoni abseiled down from the slice of pizza Nikko had frozen holding, its cheese rope pooling around it on the paper plate. His mouth was still open and his eyes darted between Cal and Juliet.

“Do you think Vincent will get him to calm down?” Juliet asked Maggie, wrapping her arms around herself.

“Probably,” Maggie smiled. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it: what’s done is done. Besides: you know what Vincent’s security is like when we’re away. Tony has only seen it when we’ve been home, and that was before this new upgrade his ‘little visit’ instigated!”

“I’m sorry, I’m still stuck on ‘you told Tony what?’” Nikko finally managed from the far end of the table.

Juliet rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t stop the smile from forming on her face.

“Nicholas, why don’t you take that pizza up to your room and start packing,” Maggie chastised him.

“You did not just send me to my room!” Nikko gawped.

“Hey,” Maggie shot back, raising a warning finger. “At least I let you take your dinner!”

“But!” Nikko tried, but was cut off by a glare from Maggie. He rolled his eyes, picked up the remainder of the pepperoni pizza and, of course, his plate, and skulked off in the direction of the stairs.

“And I think I’ll just take this up to Solomon’s room for him for when _he_ gets a time out,” Maggie added, picking up the four seasons and one of the three cheese pizzas. “I’ll be making a start on my own packing after that, so you two take your time.”

In the now empty, but for them, dining room, Cal and Juliet looked at each other across the table. Juliet laughed sheepishly and looked down at the demolition of her pizza crust.

“Not exactly what I had in mind for our first date,” Cal quipped. “Want me to get you a knife and fork for that?”

“Who eats pizza with a knife and fork?” Juliet laughed back.

“People who destroy the bit you’re meant to hold it by!” Cal retorted.

****

“What did the airfield say?” Vincent enquired, radiating a calm that threw Solomon’s agitated pacing into stark relief.

“He’ll be ready to leave by the time we get there, and something that was probably an insult,” ranted Solomon. The pacing continued. “I cannot believe Juliet would discuss something like…”

“She didn’t discuss the parchment, merely her frustrations with it,” Vincent pointed out. “And Anthony has no reason to believe we are suspicious of him. She told him she was in love with Calvin.”

“She told Tony what?” Solomon stopped pacing.

“Exactly,” smiled Vincent. “So pay up: you owe me ten bucks.”

****

Anthony Blake ran his bloody fist under cool clear water, the basin of the kitchen sink flushing pink with the result. At least it was just a few scratches. One or two fragments of plaster still protruded from his skin. Who knew they could be so sharp? She would have to be told, of course. Not about the fist, or the accusing hole in the wall it had left behind: about the girl. That little witch! How dare she end their relationship! Over the phone, too! She had left him – _him_ – for that oaf! What imbecile manages to seriously injure himself twice in the space of half a year? Nevertheless, the girl had decided the nerd was a better prospect than a successful businessman, and the news would have to be passed on to his employer. She would not be pleased. First, just as he had everything in place, the girl and her colleagues jet off somewhere and leave their building locked up tighter than a…

The sound of Anthony’s phone cut through his thoughts like a hot knife through brains. He cursed and grabbed the nearest towel, wrapping it round his hand as he stormed into the next room in search of the device.

“Blake!” Anthony barked out. “Who is this?”

“Someone it would behove you to treat with a modicum of respect, _Mister_ Blake,” growled a voice Anthony was not familiar with. “My sources tell me our plan is being delayed again?”

Ah, so that was who they were, Anthony thought. “They left suddenly,” he replied, his brain laying down words on his tongue like a cartoon character laying down railroad tracks before the train they were trapped on. “Possibly a few days, possibly a week. That was all she would tell me.”

“Really? All?” The voice seemed to be both threatening and wheedling all at once. “That does not seem to provide sufficient motivation to put one’s hand through a cheap apartment wall. I do hope you can get that fixed before the landlord finds out.”

Anthony frowned, glancing at the ragged hole in the wall. Suddenly he stood straighter, his shoulders pulling back and down, his eyes no longer angry but alert. He scanned the room. There was nothing new here. But they were watching him – they must be – so there had to be something. Something added to something old then.

“Oh, my dear Mister Blake,” sighed the voice, disappointment mingling with boredom. “I thought you were supposed to be good at this! There really is no point searching every little trinket in that room: you will not find what you are looking for.”

“Do you really expect me to take your word for that?” Blake shot back, silently cursing the fear that made the words sound like a challenge.

The voice laughed. “Heavens forbid! Turn around Mister Blake.”

Anthony turned, slowly. When he was facing the window the voice instructed him to stop, to look down. He knew what he would see before he saw it. The tiny red dot hovered over his sternum.

“I can still get in there!” Anthony argued. “The plan is delayed, not done for! Just wait for them to return! Once they’re back…”

“Once they are back you will be persona non grata,” the voice pointed out, dripping ennui. “Do you really think we would only ensure we had eyes on you? You were supposed to deal with your competition, not hand the girl over to him!”

“I thought I had!” Anthony retorted. “I did exactly…”

“Clearly you did not,” pointed out the voice. “Otherwise we would not be having this conversation.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he spat back. “It just gives me a reason to be around even more than previously. It even gives me a reason to test their security systems! Everything I do from here on out can be made to look like I’m just trying to win the little witch back!”

“An interesting choice of words for someone with your background, Mister Blake,” purred the voice. “Very well: you will have two days once the Professor and his little band of acolytes return. You will retrieve the scroll in these two days or we shall have no further use for you.”

“I swear, I will not let you down,” gasped Anthony, finally releasing the gust of stale air that had been trapped in his lungs.

“Look on the bright side, Mister Blake,” a smile seemed to lace an undercurrent of sweetness in the voice. “If you fail us in this, I can at least guarantee you that you will never fail another soul again.”


	21. “Because she was right”

Solomon Zond flicked from paper to paper. The table before him was smaller than the ones back home, but he needed something to occupy his mind while the jet crossed the watery expanse of the Atlantic ocean. He couldn’t sleep: his mind was turning somersaults! The analysis of the box had led them to Wissembourg. The decoding of its contents had led them to the abbey and its ramparts. There hadn’t been time to analyse what Maggie and Juliet found at the abbey and they hadn’t even got as far as telling the rest of the team about what Vincent and Nikko found underground as they tried to rescue Cal and Juliet. Now there was another possible lead and an almost certainly immediate threat towards it! He ran a hand through his hair and turned to the decoded runes Cal and Juliet had completed before leaving New York. The tablet wasn’t a part of the Ring. Solomon was sure of that. It was linked though. It had to be: they had found it hidden with the Horus wheel. Yet the words that had been in the coded futhark on the tablet itself made no sense. If it was a riddle, it was one he just didn’t have the available brain power right now to work out. It was the name on the tablet, alongside that riddle, that had led them to look for a route underground, by one way or another, and, thanks to his son’s sharp eyes, revealed to them their next clue. Maybe even, he dared to hope, the next piece of the Ring.

Hope was something that had been fading in Solomon Zond’s heart and mind. For the past two years they seemed to have hit more walls and dead ends than he could ever remember, and when they did find something linked to the Ring of Truth, there was always some disaster looming. He knew their work was dangerous. He knew his team understood the risks they were taking simply by associating with him. They knew them and they still chose to be a part of his team. Nevertheless, every time a tunnel caved in, or Dorna caught up with them, or they got caught in a blizzard or sandstorm or, most memorably of the past two years, tornado: every time, he felt the weight of blame and guilt settle on his shoulders like a noose around his neck.

A hand landed on Solomon’s shoulder, something that shouldn’t have made him jump quite so much as it did considering there were only the six of them on the jet and their pilot.

“You should be sleeping: it’s been a long day,” Maggie murmured. “Keep on like this and you’ll be no use to us when we get home.”

“I tried that,” sighed Solomon, edging along the seat to let Maggie sit beside him. “Didn’t work. Thought I might as well take a look at what we’ve got so far.”

“And what have we got?” Maggie enquired, taking the seat offered and casting an expert eye over the scattered paraphernalia on the relatively small table. “Anything new jump out at you from between the lines?”

Solomon sighed and shook his head. “We have a wheel with an ancient Egyptian symbol – hidden at the top of a pyramid, I grant you, but after Antarctica I’m not gonna be making any assumptions there – a tablet with a Proto-Germanic inscription, in a coded passage that translates to either the world’s most irritating riddle or utter nonsense, a box with a church Latin prayer for protection that doesn’t seem to be referring to the tablet in said box, and a Middle-Eastern parchment that we haven’t even started properly deciphering yet! What lines? We don’t have lines, we have unrelated random scribbles! We only know they’re important random scribbles because now we have Dorna back on our case!”

“Okay, firstly,” said Maggie, placing a calming hand on Solomon’s shoulder, “we don’t know that Dorna is back on our case, if they ever even left it, and secondly: we have way more reason than that for thinking these pieces are important! We know the Horus Wheel is a part of the Ring: it’s too similar to Nikko’s description and the Wheel of Dharma to be anything else. If that is a part of the ring, then it follows the tablet, which was found with it, has to be linked. It tells a part of the story, doesn’t it? Same goes for the box it was in. So the only item we have that we don’t know the details of yet is that parchment. We know the script was similar to the one found on the Elm Island tablet, but not the same: in fact, we think it’s Nabatean. We know that Dorna were spotted in the vicinity. Other than that, we know nothing. We don’t know that the parchment is linked to the ring, or if it is what Dorna were looking for. We definitely don’t know that Anthony is Dorna! What’s more: we have a plan now. And, whether Anthony Blake is or is not connected to them, he doesn’t know we suspect him, so he’s a lot less likely to see that plan coming than our usual brand of bad guy.”

“But if he is,” Solomon countered. “If it is…”

“Then he’s probably working on ways to win Juliet back as we speak! That building makes Fort Knox look like that museum in Glasgow when we’re away. Nobody in their right minds would try to break in then, when they could manage it with a little more risk and a lot less difficulty when we’re there.”

Solomon sighed, raking both hands through his hair.

“There’s nothing you can do here, Solomon,” murmured his oldest friend. “If Haley were here, you know what she’d say.”

He nodded. “Sleep now, worry later. That was almost her mantra, until Nikko was born.”

“Then, if I recall, it was almost yours.”

Solomon let out a dry laugh. “Just ‘cause I said it, doesn’t mean I felt it.”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“Because she needed to hear it,” he shrugged. “Because she was right, whether we felt it or not.”

Maggie let the silence settle around that thought. Below her hand, she felt Solomon draw in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I get it. I’ll go. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll try.”

****

_ 6 ½ Months Ago – 7 days after the fall. _

_By the time Cal and Juliet reached Grgis, the sun was heading for the horizon. They had crossed the countryside, avoiding roads, to make the journey shorter, but it had still been slow progress. Before them, the small, scattered town clung to its main roads like dew to a spider’s web, the tall tower of its central mosque a landmark for miles around. It was a Friday, and the call to prayer rang out across the rooftops and surrounding landscape. A dip in the farmland sunk down beside them, the relic of a not so distant past._

_“Let’s camp here,” suggested Juliet, a hand reaching out to rest on Cal’s arm. “We won’t find anyone to take us on to Jasim or Damascus today anyway.”_

_Calvin nodded. “I’ll take the first watch.” He half scrambled, half jumped down into the crater and turned to hold out a hand to Juliet. She waved it away._

_“There’s no need,” Juliet frowned, picking her way down into the depression. “Dorna can’t possibly know where we headed after that tunnel, if they even found it!”_

_“Yet!” Cal added. Juliet’s foot slid on some loose soil and the next moment Cal was looking down at her in his arms again. A hand on either arm, he moved her away. He turned to where he had dropped his pack. When he spoke again, the edges were gone from his voice, but somewhere in there, new walls were building. “Look, Juliet, we don’t know what they know or where they’re at just now, so it can’t hurt to play it safe, at least for the time being.”_

_“Fine,” she sighed, shifting the pack from her back to the ground and trying to focus on unpacking the necessities. Somehow the world seemed colder, as if the only source of warmth had just set her aside and walked away. Juliet shivered. “Just promise me you’ll wake me for my turn.”_

****­

“Is it my turn?” Juliet mumbled, dredging her consciousness from the muddy depths of a dream.

“Not this time,” murmured Cal, his lip curling in a smile. His hand still rested on the shoulder he had shaken. “We’re heading in to land. Time to buckle up.”

“Oh,” sighed Juliet, yawning. She sat up. “Already?”

Cal moved into the now vacant seat beside her. “Time flies when you’re wiped out.”

Juliet clicked the seatbelt into place and rested her head on Calvin’s shoulder. “I remember. You know, when I started this job I never in a million years thought I’d end up sleeping half the places I have!”

Calvin interlaced his fingers with hers and laughed. “What? You mean like in the back of an ancient pickup truck with no suspension and a lingering smell of goats?”

“Hey, goats are incredibly useful and intelligent animals,” Juliet teased, closing her fingers around his hand and nudging him with her elbow. “It’s not their fault they can be a little, well, pungent.”

“Yeah, and after two hours in that truck they weren’t the only ones!” Cal laughed. He raised Juliet’s hand to his lips and kissed it. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and serious. “You sure about this?”

“It’s the best plan we’ve got,” she replied, sitting up as the plane banked to face the runway. “Doesn’t mean I like it, or I won’t jump at the chance of a better alternative. Just means we don’t have one right now.”

“I know, but I know you…”

“I’m okay with it,” Juliet interrupted him, running her thumb over the back of his hand. “I’ve done what I needed to do. I am where I want to be. And believe me: there’s no place I’d rather be.”

“Really? No place? Than in a plane?” Cal queried, a grin trying to force its way onto his face. “’Cause I can think of a few.”

“That a fact, huh?” Juliet laughed in mock dismay. “And do I get to feature in any of them?”

Calvin leant over and pressed his lips to her forehead. He lowered his lips to her ear and his voice to a whisper. “Every single one.”

****

Vincent was the first to re-enter the Veritas building. It was his own little ritual. Every time they returned he, and only he, did a full sweep of the building before anyone else entered. He would check his systems, his traps, his checkpoints, and then, if everything was safe, he would call the others in and report any findings. He could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times someone, Dorna or otherwise, had tried to break in to the building. Only once, while they were absent, had anyone succeeded. That had been Dorna, he was certain.

He crouched to examine and remove a nigh invisible tripwire hidden in the woodwork moulding of a doorframe. It wasn’t a solid wire, of course: nothing so banal. Instead it was the latest in laser light gates, with a few modifications of his own, disguised as a screw in the wooden frame. He studied the painted wood, looking for signs of tampering, and pressed the button that switched the laser off and removed the trap. When he straightened, he turned to the shadow that had been following him.

“You walk like a tap dancer on a tin roof,” he told the young man behind him. “A wise man once said you should ‘walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet’. He was not wrong.”

“As if I’m what now?” Nikko blinked, an eyebrow raising. “Dude, where do you get these analogies?”

“He wrote many books,” mused Vincent, turning back to his surveying. “I will lend you some if you promise to read them without breaking their spines, folding down page corners, or getting crumbs in them.”

“I’m good, thanks,” nodded Nikko. “I’ll stick to graphic novels and weird history.”

“No matter how ‘good’ one is, one must always strive to be ‘better’,” Vincent smiled. He turned into the last part of his survey. It was the fourth floor. “I will take it from here, Nikko. Please return and tell your father it is safe to start bringing everything inside.”

“Hey, I thought we agreed you were gonna show me how you did this stuff!” Nikko complained. “Part of my training, and all that.”

“The fourth floor system is separate to the others. You have seen enough to attempt the challenge I have in mind.”

Without waiting for a reply, Vincent turned to the stairs up to the fourth floor. It would be interesting to see if the boy could get past his safeguards, he thought. Especially now that this new ability had surfaced. Control was still a problem though. The boy’s mind was a whirlwind of ideas and memories, research and suppositions. Until he could learn to quiet that mind, he would never have full control of his powers. Without that control in place, it would be unwise in the extreme to grant him access to the fourth floor, especially without his father’s permission.


	22. "How are you related to me?"

The wee small hours of the morning did little to quell the bustle of the New York city streets. The traffic was quieter, and there was a difference in the feel of the marginally thinner crowd traversing the streets, but the trip from the jet to the Veritas Foundation building had still felt far longer than it actually was. By the time Nikko returned to report his and Vincent’s findings to Solomon, the Professor was the only one of the four left in the car not gently nodding. Together, they roused the others and began the unloading of the vehicle. Bags and cases piled up in the hall, then were ferried up from there to various rooms. Jetlagged bodies soon began piling up in the lounge. When Vincent joined them, only Solomon was still standing, though Maggie, Cal and Juliet were all making valiant attempts to stay awake and Nikko had found a book to read.

“Everything is as it should be,” assured Vincent. “I will remain on guard, however, and put a few safeguards back in place. I will remove them again in the morning, but it would not be wise to attempt to leave the building without checking with me first. As we all have sleeping quarters here, I would strongly suggest we all make use of those for tonight at least, especially Juliet.”

“Okay, let’s get some sleep, everyone,” nodded Solomon. He caught Vincent’s eye and headed off in the direction of the kitchen. Vincent dutifully followed him.

“Never have I ever been so glad to have a bedroom right above my lab!” Maggie groaned, dragging herself to her feet and out of the room.

“I never did understand exactly how that game worked,” chattered Nikko.

“I’ll buy you a book of drinking game rules for your twenty first,” promised Cal, in that vague fog of weariness that makes everything sound like sarcasm.

“I’d be okay with that,” grinned Nikko. “You know, as…”

“Good night, Nikko,” smiled Juliet. She and Cal headed to the door hand in hand. A grin split Nikko’s face.

“Shut up, Nikko,” Calvin echoed in the same sing-song tones Juliet had used.

****

Sunday morning dawned bright and early, the sun blazing down from a cloudless sky. The light and heat did little to disturb the occupants of the Veritas building, however, and it was well into mid-morning before anyone found their way down to the kitchen for breakfast. The waiting coffee was freshly brewed. Maggie hunted down Vincent in his office.

“Do you have cameras in our bedrooms?”

“Certainly not,” replied Vincent, “that would be a terrible invasion of privacy. The corridors on the other hand…”

“Uh-huh,” mused Maggie. She raised the mug in her hand. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You are most welcome, Maggie,” Vincent rose, picking up his phone. “Solomon will be joining you shortly. If he is looking for me, please tell him I am removing our additional security measures. I will join you in the common rooms when I’m done.”

Solomon was in fact already in the kitchen, hunting for cereal, when Maggie returned.

“Sleep well?” Maggie enquired, opening a cupboard, removing a box of cereal and handing it to the still decaffeinated Solomon.

“Thanks,” he nodded, taking the box and pouring the cereal into his waiting bowl. “That obvious?”

“Little bit,” shrugged Maggie. “It is _your_ kitchen.”

“I guess that’s fair,” he yawned back, successfully hunting down milk and adding it to his cereal. Maggie handed him a mug of coffee and followed him to the table. He nodded his thanks and sat down opposite her. “I was even tempted to sneak down and take a look at that parchment myself.”

“Now that wouldn’t be fair,” Maggie chided.

Solomon half shrugged, half nodded. “I said I was tempted, I didn’t say I actually did it!”

“I’m guessing that’s our first point of business for the day.”

“Yes, and no,” replied Solomon, bobbing his head from side to side. “I want Calvin and Juliet to get that parchment translated ASAP, but I also want us all to see what Nikko and Vincent brought up from the earthworks yesterday. If we can open it, that might change our priorities a little.”

“Change what priorities now?” Nikko asked, wandering into the room and following his nose straight to the coffee. He joined his father and Maggie at the table, coffee in one hand, cereal box in the other, then sat down and started munching the cereal straight out of the box.

“Bowl?” Solomon sighed, waving his spoon in the general direction of said crockery.

“Nah, I’m good,” grinned his son. Solomon mustered up a weary glare. Nikko rolled his eyes and rotated off his chair to go grab the necessary additions.

“We were talking about priorities for today,” said Solomon, watching his precocious progeny pour milk, then cereal into his waiting bowl. “How are you related to me?”

“Says the guy who puts pineapple on pizza,” retorted Nikko around a mouthful of breakfast. “So, what’s up first then? Syrian scroll or buried box?”

“Box first. I want Cal and Juliet to take a look and see if they find anything like the last one. After that, I want them working on their parchment and we can work on the box and its contents.”

“You know, I was kinda hoping I could team up with those two this morning. Brush up on my translation skills and all that,” wheedled Nikko, looking up over his coffee mug at his father.

“Not a chance,” scoffed Solomon. “First: it’s their find, not yours. Second… Well…”

“Second: they could do with a bit of space today,” offered Maggie. “Once Tony knows Juliet’s back, she and Calvin will have to start putting on a show for whoever’s watching. Let them have today to themselves.”

It was heading for noon and the air conditioning was working overtime when the whole group finally gathered in the linguistics lab. Solomon stood at one end with a dark, purple-black metal box, slightly larger than the wooden one found in Alaska. A glint of gold inlay winked across the table as the light caught it. There were no gems: just inlaid lines of gold picking out the decorative shapes of lotuses on either side of a small collection of hieroglyphs. Five symbols clustered together, starting with what looked like a pyramid with a smaller pyramid inside it. Next to it was an ankh, then a snake over a semi-circle and a straight line. Solomon picked up the box and held it up for Maggie to scan the symbols. He was wearing gloves.

“Di ankh djet,” read Juliet. “Given life eternal.”

“Ancient Egyptian black copper most likely,” nodded Solomon, “hence the gloves. We haven’t tested it yet, but it is something we need to do as one of the ingredients in Egyptian black copper may have been arsenic.”

“What do you think ‘life eternal’ means?” Calvin frowned, scrutinising the box from the opposite end of the table. “We’re not going to open that thing and get eaten alive by a swarm of scarabs that have been locked up since the Middle Kingdom, are we?”

“That only happens in movies,” murmured Vincent, quietly reassuring nobody.

“There are other symbols on the other sides,” said Solomon, resuming his lecture. “We need to get them translated and get this thing open.”

“Maybe it’s a cat,” Nikko offered. Everyone looked at him. “What? They loved cats in Ancient Egypt and cats loved boxes.” He shrugged. “If it fits…”

“It doesn’t,” retorted Solomon. “The only cat boxes I know of in Ancient Egypt were very definitely cat shaped. Cat mummy shaped, to be more precise.”

“On the other hand, it is another link between the Wissembourg tablet and the Horus wheel,” Maggie pointed out. “Maybe even the link we’ve been looking for.”

Solomon shook his head. “I doubt the contents of this box will answer all our questions, but I’m sure it’ll answer some of them. If we can figure out how to open it, that is.”

“The Wissembourg box had a button disguised as a part of the box itself,” offered Juliet. She looked from the box up to its image on the plasma screen. “In that case it was a knot in the wood, but in this one maybe it’s a part of one of the glyphs.”

Calvin, silent since his scarabs comment, stared at the box, watching the professor turn it over and round in his hands. Solomon caught his expression and paused. “What’re you thinking, Cal.”

“Hmm?” Cal looked up with a start, called back to the present by the sound of his name. “Oh, uh, nothing important. Probably not important, anyway. Just something the other box reminded me of.”

“Which is?” Maggie pressed.

“Oh, um, well, when we found the parchment in Syria, the room we found it in was hidden, right?”

“I remember,” nodded Solomon. “It came up when you got back to Jerusalem with the parchment. What about it?”

“It used the same sort of disguise for the button to get into the room. I mean there were a whole bunch of hidden buttons and levers and stuff, but the button to open the door in the first place, and the button on the Wissembourg box were both painted to hide them in the background of the picture.”

“Yeah, but the catacombs in Syria were built eight hundred years and more after the Wissembourg box,” countered Juliet.

“Am I the only person finding it ironic the box we keep calling the Wissembourg box is the one we _didn’t_ find in Wissembourg?” Nikko cut in.

“Yes,” chorused five voices.

“It is not strange for ideas and techniques to be passed on through the ages,” observed Vincent. “We may seek for what was lost, but all that we use to do this is built upon knowledge that was retained and passed on.”

“Either way, we now have two puzzles to figure out,” nodded Solomon. He looked to Cal and Juliet at the far end of the table. “You two: use the scans to translate the hieroglyphs round the sides of this thing first, then work through that parchment. I want to see that translation yesterday! Maggie: I want to know just what recipe of black copper we’re dealing with here. Vincent, Nikko: find me a way into this thing.”

“And you will be?” Nikko breezed as the others headed away.

“I’ll be hitting the books,” replied his father. A grin broke out across Solomon Zond’s face. “Unless, of course, you want to swap.”

Nikko pulled on a pair of gloves, waggling his fingers into place and letting the nitrile snap against his wrist. He grinned. “Magical metal mystery box for me, please.”

Solomon handed the box to Vincent and laughed. “Get him out of here before someone nominates him for an Oscar or something!”

****

Anthony Blake was not a particularly religious man, but Sunday was his day of rest regardless. He jogged through the leafy shade of Central Park, the pitter-patter of Dizzy Gillespie playing through his headphones. This was his time to relax. To lose himself in the music and the trees. The music stopped. So did Anthony. He checked his headphones, but they were still connected. It was the iPod itself that was dead. He checked his phone: that was dead too. The thought crossed his mind that he might just be about to join them.

“Don’t worry,” said a voice in the shrubbery. Somehow the way they said it managed to negate any shred of comfort the phrase was designed to convey. “Just one of our little toys. It makes sure we have your full attention and nobody can interrupt or listen in to our little chat. Just plug them into their chargers when you get home and they’ll be fine.”

“Who are you?” Anthony asked, straightening and turning to face the source of the sound. His eyes searched the vegetation for this new acquaintance in vain. When the voice spoke again it was behind him.

“I am exactly who you think I am,” it said, almost lazily. “I am a representative of the organisation you have spent the last six months achieving absolutely nothing for.”

“So now you’re here to kill me?” Anthony asked, turning to follow the voice.

This time the voice laughed. Not merrily or darkly, just the kind of slight laugh an adult uses when a young child says something incredibly naïve. The comparison was not lost on Anthony.

“No, Mister Blake, I am not here to kill you. Not today, anyway. If I were, you and I would not be having this pleasant, friendly little chat, I assure you. No, I am here to deliver your instructions.”

“What instructions?” Anthony shrugged. “I told you yesterday: Juliet dumped me. It’s over.”

“Why so defeatist, Mister Blake?” Once again, the voice sounded out from a different direction. “Faint heart never won fair lady, you know. Besides: your little gamble may just have paid off. We acquired a lot of data from that little tour you took of your beloved’s workplace. We have been analysing it and extrapolating from it where necessary and I believe we now have a workable plan.”

Something small and dark flew out of the bushes and landed at Anthony’s feet. He bent down to examine it. It was a USB thumb drive. He picked it up.

“It may have escaped your notice,” said the voice, in the most weary and withering of tones, “but Professor Zond and his little band of acolytes have returned early from their trip. Remarkably early. So early, in fact, they must have been planning their return either before or not long after your conversation with Doctor Droil. You may find your battle with the young Doctor Banks is not quite over. If Doctor Droil contacts you, you are to attempt to re-engage her attentions. We do not believe this will be difficult. Do not, however, mistake attentions for affections. On the flash drive in your hand you will find detailed plans for the retrieval of an artefact of particular importance to us, along with a description of the artefact in question. There are a number of other items listed also. You will study the plans and memorise all pertinent information. When we next contact you it will be to order the execution of those plans. Your primary target is the artefact. If you come across any of the other items listed, and are able to remove them safely, take them, but do not deviate from the primary target in order to find them. Get the artefact and get out. Delivery of the artefact is also detailed on the drive.”

“Then I’m done, right?” Anthony nodded. “I get you this thing. You pay me. We go our own separate ways. Done and dusted, yeah?”

“Once we have the artefact, our employment of you will be terminated as agreed, yes,” replied the voice. “Best head home now, Mister Blake: you have some considerable homework to be getting on with.”

Anthony didn’t hear the speaker leave. There was no flitting shadow disappearing into the greenery. Nevertheless, he felt the shadows empty and knew the interview was ended. Terminated. It was never his favourite word, even before movies gave it a whole other level of meaning. The way his employer used it made him think the mystery guy had seen those movies too.


	23. “Dad: don’t freak out.”

“How goes it?” Solomon Zond’s voice cut through the hum of the air conditioning unit. Cal and Juliet looked up from the partially unrolled parchment and numerous computer printouts that surrounded them.

“We’ve got the whole thing scanned into the computer,” replied Juliet, waving a hand in the direction of the keyboard and monitor. “Our algorithm gave us a transliteration from that and we’re checking and translating it now.”

“We’re working through, a page at a time,” added Calvin. “I check the transliteration and Juliet starts translating.”

“It looks like a story,” continued Juliet, handing the pad she was working on to the Professor. “Possibly another part of the story of the Ring. The sections in parentheses are those where we have to guess at translation either because we can’t be sure what is actually written on the parchment, or because we simply don’t know that word yet.”

“Okay, how far have you got?” Solomon asked, handing the pad back to Juliet.

“It’s slow going,” answered Cal. “The transliteration is more or less done, and when I’m finished checking that I’ll start translating too, but neither of us is really familiar with Nabatean, so it’ll take longer than if it was in Aramaic or Egyptian or something.”

“We’re about a third of the way through the translation,” shrugged Juliet. “At this rate we’ll be here until midnight!”

“Do your best,” nodded the Professor, “but don’t overdo it. I’m ordering food: any preference?”

“Anything with noodles,” replied Calvin, helpfully, turning his attention back to the printout and parchment before him.

“Chinese,” suggested Juliet. “Maybe some dumplings?”

“No squid!” Cal added without looking up.

“Chinese, dumplings, noodles, no squid, got it,” Solomon grinned. “I’ll send Nikko through when we get back with it, then maybe there’ll still be some dumplings left by the time you join us.”

By the time Solomon and his son returned, Calvin and Juliet had finished checking and correcting the transliteration and were heading for half way through the parchment translation. The hieroglyphs on the metal box had taken minutes to identify and their translations were passed on to the rest of the team before the first forgotten mug of coffee managed to get cold. The parchment had been another story.

Scanning the parchment had allowed the computer to compare its symbols with those in the program the two philologists had created. Translation, however, was not so easy. Sections of the text were damaged or missing, and the program could only identify that which it recognised. It wasn’t as bad as trying to teach a computer to read cursive, but it wasn’t too far off. That meant someone, Cal, reading through the transliteration and comparing it with the printout and parchment. Twice the work, perhaps, but the goal was to continue adjusting the program until they could trust it to do the task at least reasonably accurately. That meant it had to learn from experience too.

Translating the transliteration also held pitfalls. In the absence of vowels and punctuation, grammar became a minefield. Egyptian grammar and verb tenses were confusing enough, but this puzzle would take all Juliet and Cal’s combined skills. There were still a lot of blanks, for all that they were two fifths of the way through the scroll, but as they neared the more protected interior, those blanks got fewer. The symbols were clearer. The structure was more obvious. The story made more sense. Linguistically at any rate!

The common rooms, as Vincent had called them, included a dining room with a table easily large enough to accommodate the whole team. It was rarely used, though, with the kitchen table serving for scattered breakfasts and the linguistics lab table providing a larger surface on the less rare occasions the entire group were gathered in the building for dinner. This time, however, the parchment and its associated paperwork took precedence, and Solomon found himself setting out the food on mats already placed amid cutlery and crockery already laid. Maggie and Vincent appeared from the kitchen with serving spoons and bowls, solving one mystery at least, and the meal was ready and waiting by the time the younger half of the team arrived with the clues to another.

“It’s definitely linked to the legend of the Ring of Truth,” said Juliet, passing the rice round to Vincent. “There’s no doubt about that.”

“Problem is,” continued Calvin, helping himself to noodles, “we’ve no way, yet, of knowing how it’s linked. It’s probably not contemporary, because the language and script are different, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a copy of some contemporary items. On the other hand, it could just be someone writing down a legend handed down orally, which would mean there might not be much truth in it at all, like the stories of the Arthurian grail and Camelot and so on.”

“What, Camelot’s not real?” Nikko asked, his voice rising to the sarcasm. “Next you’ll be telling me there’s no Santa Claus!”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t go pulling any teeth out either,” quipped Calvin, grinning.

Professor Zond poured himself a glass of water and brought the conversation back on track. “So, possibly a legend, duly noted, but what did this legend say exactly? Any hints on where to look next? We’ve hit a wall with the Egyptian box.”

“Well, I offered, but you wouldn’t let me,” added Nikko.

“Not yet,” Juliet replied, shaking her head. “No, this is more like what the Ring can do, maybe even how it does it. There’s a lot of gaps and patches we’re really not sure of, but one passage mentions a vessel and another refers to the ring as something that we’re reasonably sure translates to conduit.”

“Conduit for what?” Maggie frowned.

“That’s what we don’t know,” replied Cal. “I mean, sure, we could easily assume it’s this ‘power of God’ that the Ring is supposed to possess, but who knows: it might be a conduit for anything!”

“Anything like what?” Nikko shrugged. “The long awaited zombie apocalypse? Alien invaders? Abba’s greatest hits?”

“I don’t know,” Cal shot back, “but isn’t that the point? This could be one huge Pandora’s Box! The parchment might be some kind of warning: like what might happen if we go about this the wrong way or if the Ring gets into the wrong hands.”

“Like in Raiders?” Solomon supplied.

“Totally like in Raiders,” agreed Cal, pointing his chopsticks at the Professor. “And we do not want to end up like those guys!”

At the corner of the table farthest from the door, Vincent sat in pensive silence, mechanically making his way through his meal. Quietly placing his chopsticks side by side on his plate, he rose. “Excuse me, I see the water jug needs refilling.”

Taking the jug, Vincent made his way to the door, passing Nikko as he did so. The light double tap on Nikko’s shoulder went unnoticed by the rest of the group. The jug was barely half full when the team’s youngest member excused himself and joined Vincent in the kitchen.

“I believe the time has come to make your new-found abilities known to the rest of the team,” said Vincent, coming straight to the point.

“They’ll freak,” replied his pupil. “Dad especially!”

“Can you envisage any situation in which they would not?” Vincent enquired mildly. The water jug now full, he turned the tap off and turned to raise an eyebrow at Nikko.

Nikko extracted a can of soda from the fridge. Staring blankly in front of him in thought. He sighed and looked down at the can in his hand, as if in search of inspiration. Inspiration found him: it was the same type of soda as the can he had first moved.

“Okay,” he told the soda. He looked round to Vincent and said it again. “Okay. Okay, let’s tell them.” Nikko paused. He looked away, frowned, then looked back to Vincent. “How?”

Vincent smiled. He reached out and took the soda can from Nikko, holding it up before the young man’s eyes. “Perhaps this is something better shown than told.”

When they returned, the rest of the group were debating whether Juliette should remain that evening to work on the parchment, as she wanted to do, or go back to her apartment and ‘accidentally’ bump into Anthony tomorrow, as they had initially planned. It sounded like Solomon was losing. Nikko returned to his seat empty handed, earning him an odd look from Cal and Maggie. Vincent placed the water and soda on the table before him. Something in the delicately deliberate way he did so caught the attention of Juliet and, subsequently, Solomon. A curious, watchful silence descended, awaiting explanation.

Solomon’s eyes flicked up from the can to Vincent. “Since when did you drink soda with your meals?”

“The can is not for me, it is for Nikko,” replied Vincent. “There is something we believe you should know, and the time has come to tell you. Better: to show you.”

From the corner diagonally opposite to Vincent, Nikko spoke up. “Dad: don’t freak out.”

Solomon’s attention was instantly riveted onto his son. “Why would I…” A movement from the centre of the table caught Solomon’s eye, cutting him off and bringing a frown to his face. Everything on the table had moved aside to make a clear pathway between the waiting soda can and Nikko’s hand. “What?”

With a flex of fingers, Nikko brought the can to his hand. The reaction was not exactly what he expected. There were no screams and exclamations, no hysterics; there was simply stunned silence. At least for a few seconds.

“That’s new,” commented Maggie, at last, her eyes still wide, just like everyone else’s.

“Is it?” Calvin demanded, punching Nikko none too gently on the arm. “You told me that wasn’t you. It was, wasn’t it?”

“What. Just. Happened,” Juliet enunciated, not taking her eyes off the soda can.

“Dad,” Nikko repeated. “Don’t freak out. Dad?”

Solomon closed his mouth. He swallowed. He closed his eyes. He breathed. He looked at Vincent. When he spoke, it was slowly, clearly, and carefully controlled. “How long, exactly, have you known that my son has unexplained, telekinetic abilities?”

“Merely long enough to ascertain what those abilities were,” replied Vincent, his voice as placid as his features.

Solomon’s voice hardened. “How long?”

“Only a few days,” admitted Vincent. “I stumbled across the knowledge after escorting our spy from the premises.”

“Last Thursday,” nodded Solomon. “And you didn’t tell me because?”

“He didn’t tell you because I asked him not to, Dad!” Nikko shouted from the far end of the table.

Now Solomon’s attention was entirely on his son. “And how long, exactly, have you known you could do this?”

Nikko shrank back from his father’s glare, his jaw tightening with the ghost of that old defiance that had kept them apart for so long. “A while,” he retorted. The adult he had become fought back the unruly teen he had been. “Two years,” he answered, his tone softening.

“Two years!” Solomon bellowed, slamming his chopsticks down on the table and leaving a smudge of oily satay sauce on the cloth.

“First time was right after we fitted the first pieces of the ring together,” Nikko sighed, paying far more attention to stirring the noodles on his plate than the flush of colour in his father’s face.

Cal’s gaze wandered into the misty halls of memory. “After _you_ fitted the first pieces of the ring together, you mean.” He looked up and caught Juliet’s eye. “D’you think maybe…”

“Maybe that made Nikko the conduit?” Juliet finished, looking from Calvin to Nikko.

Solomon was still sputtering at the head of the table. Opposite him, Maggie rose. “Solomon, could I have a word with you?”

“Huh? What?” Solomon replied, looking round from his son to his friend.

“A word, Solomon,” repeated Maggie. “In private. Now.”

Ignoring the others, Solomon obediently got up and followed Maggie from the room. “How are you so calm right now?”

“Why are you so surprised?” Maggie countered, rounding on him as soon as the door of the kitchen closed behind him. “Don’t you remember why we’re doing this? Have you forgotten how this whole thing started? When the Veritas Foundation opened this building and you first stepped over the threshold, I was right there beside you: do you remember why? You asked me to help you finish what Haley started and you said to me, right out there on those steps, before we walked through those doors, that you needed someone you could trust not only with Haley’s work, but with Nikko too. You told me the truth about what happened to Haley, as far as you knew it at the time, and you asked me to keep an eye on Nikko. You were worried about him, and not just because he had lost his mother. You have been waiting for something like this to happen to him for a dozen years and change, and then there’s the Ring on top of that! And don’t tell me that boy’s put your nose out of joint because he didn’t own up to having a brand new set of superpowers: you didn’t tell him _your_ suspicions _at all_!”

“But!” Solomon sputtered, throwing up a hand to defend against Maggie’s tirade.

“But me no buts, Solomon Zond,” Maggie brushed away the gesture. “You have your secrets and he has his. He’s as entitled to them as you are and if you blow a fuse in there because he’s taken two years to tell you what you’ve secretly been worrying about for twelve you risk undoing all the progress you two have made since he joined the team!”

Solomon sagged. Maggie was right: she usually was. The stubbornness, the secrets, the impulsive, even sometimes rash, emotional outbursts: these were all traits Nikko had inherited from him, not from Haley. It was why they had drifted further and further apart in the first place. He couldn’t let it drive a wedge between them again. He set his hands on his hips and nodded, downcast.

“How much does he know about Haley’s disappearance?” Maggie asked, her voice dropping to the soft gentle tones she so often felt the need to employ when talking to Solomon about her best friend. It was like probing an empty tooth socket: the further you got from the time of the damage, the less it hurt, directly; but even when the pain was so dull you barely noticed it, the empty socket itself still reminded you there was something missing.

“I’m not sure,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “More than he thinks, probably.”

“How so?”

Solomon looked up, folding his arms in front of himself like a man building a barricade. “He used to have nightmares: almost every night at first but gradually they got less frequent. I’d hear him screaming for his Mom and go through to wake him, but as soon as he was awake he couldn’t remember the dream. Just light, he would say. Really bright light.”

Maggie nodded. She laid a hand on Solomon’s shoulder. “I think maybe it’s time to join some dots. Not right this minute, but after dinner, definitely. First, though, there’s a reason your son chose now to tell you this. We’re going back in there and you are going to listen to him and show him you love him: secrets, superpowers and all.”

“Show him how?” Solomon frowned. “He’s my son: of course I love him!”

“Trust me, Solomon: he needs to hear it from you, whether you straight up tell him or just show him by listening and treating him like the adult he is. Maybe the unconditional love and acceptance of a parent should be a given, but the truth is it’s not. Sometimes you need to hear or see the evidence of it before you can really believe it.”

“Speaking from experience?”

Maggie spat out a wry laugh. “The only evidence my parents showed me was the door. If Haley hadn’t been on the lookout for a roommate I’d have been sunk. That, however is a story for another time and what’s left of dinner is getting cold.”

Maggie unfolded an arm in the direction of the door and, like a penitent scolded child, Solomon preceded her back to the dining room. The quiet ripple of whispered conversation ceased at his return.

“I, that is, Maggie and I, think there are a few more things we need to discuss about, well, about topics that might be a bit too heavy for the dinner table, Nikko. They might have a bearing on these new abilities and what they mean. While we’re eating, though, why don’t you tell us more about how they started, what they’re like? And while you’re at it, you could please pass me the soy sauce?”

Nikko looked at the bottle sitting well within arms reach of his father. “Dude, it’s right there!”

Solomon held up a waiting hand and raised an eyebrow at his son. Nikko rolled his eyes and made a small gesture with one hand. Solomon felt the bottle arrive in his hand. He grinned at his son. “Thank you.”


	24. “I’m gonna vote no on that!”

Dinner over, Cal and Juliet returned to their work on the parchment. Juliet had won her argument to stay the night by pointing out the greater urgency of the translation in view of Nikko’s revelations. The others retired to the lounge, where at least the seating would be comfortable even if the conversation wasn’t. Solomon was the last to arrive, a pair of beers in each hand. He handed them out, one by one, pausing when it came to his son.

“Go easy,” he warned Nikko. “I’m not making a second trip and this is going to be difficult for both of us, Maggie too.”

Nikko nodded and set the beer to one side. “This is about Mom, isn’t it,” he said, far more a statement than a question.

Solomon took a sip of his beer and put it down. “How much do you remember about what happened?”

“Not a lot,” frowned Nikko. “Why?”

“When Haley vanished there were only two witnesses: you and Mikhail. Now, the stuff leading up to that you could remember, both of you, but after Mikhail took you out of the chamber, you always said you couldn’t remember anything: just light. You turned back and all you saw was light, then nothing. Mikhail picked you up and carried you back to camp. The next thing you remember was waking up there with him using the satellite phone to call for help.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Nikko nodded.

“Anything to add? Anything you’ve remembered since?” Solomon pressed.

Something tugged at Nikko’s memory. Something that hadn’t meant anything special at the time. “There was something,” he said, staring at the floor in thought. “A symbol or a carving or something. Something I saw there and have seen since, but I didn’t connect the two at the time. Why? Do _you_ have something to add, Dad?”

Solomon cast his eyes over his son, so changed now from the child he had been. It was time. If anyone could handle this, Nikko could. That was a trait he inherited from Haley. “Yeah,” he mused. “Yes. Yes, there is something we didn’t tell you. Something Mikhail saw, but either you didn’t, or you didn’t remember it. I don’t know which. I don’t know if telling you this is going to have some weird effect on these new abilities. Back in the early days, when you woke up screaming every other night, I thought maybe you did remember, but your memory had walled it off. I thought, if I told you then, it might make things worse.”

“What?” Nikko begged, residual Zond impatience pushing him onward no matter the cost. “Dad, you gotta tell me now. You can’t just leave it at that.”

“I will, I will,” placated Solomon, matching gesture to words. “I just wanted to know if there was anything in those nightmares that you remembered. You always just said there was light. Did you… Do you remember if the light did anything in those dreams?”

“You think they were repressed memories?” Nikko blinked. “No, I don’t. There was just Mom, reaching out to this glowing sun symbol…”

Nikko’s sudden silence and dropped eyes made the rest of the room sit a little straighter in their seats.

“What?” Solomon breathed, returning his son’s question to him with the look of a true scientists on the verge of a breakthrough. Hope sang through that one word.

“The sun symbol,” Nikko muttered, casting about for paper and pen. His eye settled on a half completed crossword. He grabbed it and scribbled in the margin. “The symbol on the temple wall, it was a depiction of the solar system. Mom was amazed because it was a heliocentric system that dated back way before Copernicus. The sun, in the middle, looked like this: a circular hemisphere protruding from the wall with eight raised relief rays reaching out from it, each gradually tapering to a point.” He tapped the diagram as he spoke. “As Mom raised her hand to the hemisphere, it started glowing and she sent me away. I remember feeling the hairs rise on the back of my neck as I was leaving, and the light reflecting off the walls of the passage, and I just knew something was wrong, so I turned and ran back. I just got to see this light fill the temple, then nothing until I was back at camp. But I saw that symbol again, only once.” This time Nikko drew a double layered circle around the sun symbol. He turned the diagram back to his audience. “When I saw that hallucination of the Ring.”

The look that passed from Solomon to Vincent to Maggie and back was unmistakeable. Solomon sat back and took another swig of beer. Maggie watched him, a silent conversation passing between them. Vincent watched Nikko and considered the diagram. He was the first of the three to break the silence.

“Do you believe the temple your mother found will lead us to this piece of the Ring?” Vincent enquired, sanguine as ever.

Nikko, trying to translate the apparent telepathy of Solomon and Maggie, did a double take at this. His attention settled on his mentor. “What? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe… Maybe it’s something else.”

“Such as?” Vincent pressed.

“The night before we went to the temple,” Nikko began, noting, out of the corner of his eye, the return of his father’s attention, “just before we called Dad, Mom was telling me this story…”

“The star that fell, or that Sagittarius shot down or however that legend went,” Solomon supplied, sitting up again. “She used to tell it to you all the time when you were little. It was one of your favourite bedtime stories. All the old legends were, really, but that one you both loved.”

“And then, when we got the translation of the Elm Island tablet back,” Nikko continued, “we found out that the Ring was something else that fell, or was thrown in this case, to Earth.”

Maggie was swiftest on the uptake. “You think they’re the same thing?”

“Well, it would make sense, wouldn’t it?” Nikko replied, leaning forward in his chair. “Anything that size falling to Earth – whether shot down, thrown down, or otherwise – would light up in the atmosphere like a falling star. Everything else is just people scrambling to explain the unexplainable. That temple was on the site: the site where the star fell. Mom was sure of it. What if that’s why it was there? It was built on the site where the Ring landed, not necessarily where a part of the Ring is hidden!” Nikko paused. “I mean it might be both, but…”

“But either way,” continued Solomon, “it now means we’ve got three continents to search for clues instead of two.”

“Now what were you going to tell me?” Nikko asked, sitting back again. He reached a hand out to the bottle of beer by his side and took a shaky sip. “That’s everything I can add, so now it’s your turn Dad: what did Mikhail say that you didn’t want me to know?”

“When you saw the light fill the room, did it fill it evenly?” Solomon enquired, gently, rolling the beer bottle back and forth between his hands.

“I… I guess so,” shrugged Nikko. “It was just… There was just light, everywhere. Why? What did Mikhail see?”

Solomon nodded. “He was a little further back and higher up than you, Nikko” he began. “Before the room filled with light, he saw a pulse.”

“A pulse?” Nikko frowned.

“A pulse,” repeated Solomon, “of golden light. He said it formed a ring, or a circle,” Solomon paused, glancing down then up at his son again. “And he said it hit you full force. It didn’t just hit you either: it went into you. The steps were slightly curved and he was a little off to one side. He saw this circle of light, golden light, shoot out from the door and collide with you. It didn’t go beyond you, just to you, and into you, or so we’ve thought.”

“So what? You think this light is why I can play baseball without a bat now?” Nikko queried, watching his father’s face more carefully than he had done in years. “If that’s so, why did it only start when we, I, put the pieces of the ring together?”

Solomon shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s a link there somehow.”

“Perhaps the light itself is the link,” offered Vincent. The others seemed to consider this in silent confusion. Vincent decided to explain. “It has struck me, recently, how our quest for the Ring only seems to advance in any great way when Nikko is a part of the team. Perhaps the light formed a link between him and the Ring somehow: a link that guides him to the fragments or their clues.”

“Okay,” nodded Solomon, still folding his thought processes around the influx of new information. “I can see that.”

“Would explain a lot,” added Maggie, watching Solomon.

Solomon’s eyes did not come up from the spot on the carpet they seemed to be examining.

“Dad, if you’re about to suggest I sit on a computer chair with my arm out and you guys spin me round and see which way I end up facing, I’m gonna vote no on that!” Nikko quipped.

Solomon blinked out of his reverie and looked up with a laugh. “Well, now that you mention it, that’s not a half bad idea!” Nikko gave him a look. Solomon laughed again. “Okay, I’m kidding about the chair, but I do think we ought to go with your gut from hereon out.”

“So glad to know my skills are appreciated,” quipped the glorified compass dryly.

“So, what’s your next move?” Vincent asked father and son. “Stay on the parchment and the box or start looking into Haley’s temple?”

Zond senior rubbed his chin and looked up to the floors above. “Cal and Juliet are on the parchment,” he said. “Let’s split the rest. Maggie, Nikko: keep working on the box. Nikko, why don’t you try out your skills on it, see if it responds to that. Vincent and I will start going back through the relevant parts of Haley’s journals.”

The three nodded, though Maggie frowned a little at Solomon’s pensive expression. “Okay,” she said, rising. “I’ll go tell Cal and Juliet we’re all staying here tonight and to put a hold on Plan Tony until we get things sorted out. We’re a little busy to be adding counter espionage to our to do list right now.”

“Yeah, I guess,” murmured Solomon. He looked at Nikko, who nodded and followed Maggie out.

“Are we really going over Haley’s notes?” Vincent enquired once the coast was clear.

“Of course,” nodded Solomon, getting to his feet.

Vincent stood and looked his friend in the eye. “Just Haley’s notes?”

“Well, now, I never said that,” admitted Solomon with a smirk.

“You enjoy keeping secrets too much,” Vincent scolded with a smile. “It is unhealthy.”

“Everyone has their secrets,” shrugged Solomon. “It’s normal.”

“Normal it may be,” admitted Vincent, “but these are the kind of secrets that could seriously damage your wellbeing.”

“I don’t see how,” breezed Solomon, leading the way to the elevator.

Vincent came up to stand beside him at the metal doors. “Not telling your team in time might get you killed, for one thing.”

****

De Molay took a book from the quietly ostentatious bookcase in his library. He ran delicate fingers over the title embossed on the front cover. Once it had been inlaid with gold, now it only glittered if the light hit it at just the right angle, and only at the edges of the letters. Still, it’s title was as well known to him as the tales within it. he had read them to his children, centuries ago, as they lay in their beds before sleep welcomed them. They had read them to their children, and to their children’s children, until the book had been returned to him and only the memory of the tales had been passed on through the generations. Eventually, one enterprising descendant, not knowing any better, had written his inherited memory of the legends into a new book, new at the time, anyway. That book had spread, taking the muddled renderings of tales handed down the generations and selling them to an increasingly literate populace hungry for an escape from the humdrum of their ordinary lives. It was, he supposed, a magic accessible to all: the art of the story. Whether written or spoken, such things had the unique ability to transport the mind, if not the body, to a world beyond our own. Would those readers now cheer or tremble were they to discover how much truth lay in the origin of those very tales?


	25. “I come bearing coffee”

Juliet felt her head sag, her eyes watering in the effort of staying open. The characters on the paper before her were starting to swim. A warm hand rested on her back and she sat up with a start. “I’m okay.”

“No, you’re not,” murmured Calvin. “You’re tired. We both are. Come on: let’s put this away for the night. We’ll be better able to make sense of it after a full night’s sleep.”

“I could just take a nap – just a little one,” Juliet protested, automatically straightening her papers. “Just a half hour and then back to work.”

“Nope,” Cal shook his head. He began his delicate, meticulous method of closing the ancient scroll. A smile crept onto his face when Juliet, still running on autopilot, began helping. Their hands met when the scroll closed. He ran his fingers over the back of her hand and lifted it to his lips. “Tired minds make mistakes, remember?”

Juliet looked up and smiled. “I remember.”

****

_ Just over 6 months ago, 8 days after the fall _

_“Two rooms, upper floor, both with bathrooms,” Cal reported, handing Juliet her key. “They’re a few rooms apart, but both open out onto the same part of the balcony up there.”_

_Juliet looked up at the walkway overlooking the interior courtyard of the hotel. They were situated at the edge of Old Damascus, and everywhere she looked the architecture rewarded a second, lingering glance. From the shining patterns of the floor tiles to the varied arches over windows, doors and balcony, some smooth and gliding arcs, others delicately combining curve and corner. Intricate designs were inlaid into the furniture that awaited her in her room too, the bright mother-of-pearl patterns contrasting with the dark-stained wood of the wardrobe, cupboards and elegant four-poster bed._

_“Meet you in the courtyard in half an hour?” Cal suggested. “We ought to let the others know we’re here.”_

_Juliet nodded. “I could eat, too. They’re still serving food, right?”_

_“If not, there’s probably somewhere nearby that is,” he shrugged._

_Juliet nodded, letting the door swing closed behind her. She dropped her pack on the bed and rummaged for clean clothes and her washbag. Twenty minutes later she was sitting, damp hair drying in the slight breeze, in the hotel’s courtyard._

_“Hey,” murmured Cal, picking a seat by her side at the small table. “How’s the signal?”_

_Juliet turned the sat-phone in her hand towards him. “Good enough. Shall we?”_

_At a nod from Cal, she dialled the Professor. Vincent answered._

_“So, you finally made it, huh?” Vincent grinned. The picture was small, dark and grainy, but they could just make out a stone wall in the background._

_“To the hotel,” nodded Juliet, “but we haven’t met with Professor Zond’s contact yet.”_

_“There have been no changes to the arrangements,” said Vincent, glancing off to the side. “Ibrahim will be in the main reading room of the national library from eight in the morning until it closes at half past three, every day except Friday and Saturday, when it’s closed all day. You have his picture, and Calvin knows him well enough: do you think you can pick him out okay?”_

_Calvin nodded. “Yeah, we just have to get there before closing time. It’s on the opposite side of the old city from where we are, but we should be able to make it okay. We’ll pick up something to eat along the way.”_

_“Eat when you can, sleep when you can,” mused Vincent. “Feed the body, feed the mind; because you never know when your body might have to skip a meal, and tired minds make mistakes. There’s a great restaurant on Straight Street, if memory serves.”_

_“Duly noted,” smiled Juliet. “It’s about an hour’s walk from here to the library, less if we can grab some form of transport. We’ll have plenty time to stop and eat on the way. If there’s nothing else, we’ll head out now and call you back when we have the manuscript.”_

_Vincent nodded a farewell and the screen went blank. Juliet stowed the satellite phone safely away in her bag. She turned to Cal, who was already on his feet. He held out a hand to her._

_“Come on, then,” he said, helping her to her feet, then reluctantly dropping her hand. “Let’s eat.”_

****

Solomon Zond jerked awake, gasping for air like a man surfacing from the icy depths of a frozen lake. He dragged a hand across his eyes and looked up at the old wall clock above him. Nearly ten past four in the morning. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep at his desk, but when did he ever? That was where the clock came from, after all. On their first anniversary as husband and wife, Haley had presented him with that clock, so he would always have a reminder near him of how late he was working. There was still the big red arrow on it, one end pointing to the ten and the other attached to the words “GO TO BED” emblazoned on an ancient square of cardboard pinned to the wooden framework.

He picked up the coffee mug near at hand. There was still some coffee in there, stone cold but still caffeinated. He drained the mug. Solomon was no stranger to cold coffee. The papers on his desk seemed to swim back into focus. Some were his notes, others were Haley’s. A few other items came from fellow researchers or, in one case, a dig he and Haley had worked on together. The rosy light of dawn cast long, faint shadows on the faience scarab currently being used as a paperweight. There was some method in the madness. One pile was papers of Haley’s that he had checked, one pile was those that he hadn’t. A third pile was made up of the non-Haley papers. He hadn’t started on them yet. So far, he had noted just seven mentions of the “star” that Sagittarius, sometimes also called Chiron, shot down. One of them was a handwritten copy of the tale in its entirety, as Haley would tell it to Nikko when he was little. It was written in symbols that Solomon, and perhaps Nikko, alone could decipher, as were many of Haley’s notes to him. Some of those notes, he considered, contained information Dorna would love to get their hands on. Some, but by no means all. Once upon a time, in a time before e-mails and text messages had sucked the romance out of the world, those secret symbols had merely been a fun way to send letters to one another that nosey friends and relatives could not read. Then Dorna had come into their lives and the cipher had taken on a new role. Haley had only just found out that she was pregnant then.

Solomon paused. Rifling through the pile, he dragged out the envelope containing the story. It had been long enough since he had looked at it, but the cipher was still clear in his mind. He marvelled that, in all his years researching Haley’s work, he hadn’t spotted it before. It was just a story – a bedtime story she had told their son – so why write it in code?

****

_ Just over 6 months ago, 8 days after the fall _

_The food had been delicious, but when you’d spent the last few days grazing on granola bars, any alternative probably would have been. The walk through the streets of the old city had helped shift the drowsiness that followed their first good meal in a week, but Juliet was still glad this part of their trip was nearly over and she would be able to sleep in a real bed that night. She was particularly glad that she would be sleeping in a real bed in a room of her own. The Damascene Sword monument rose before them, looking out over the great wheel of parks and roads in the square beyond it. The library was two roads over from the sword, its stolid, squat, concrete form reminiscent of mid-twentieth century university buildings the world over. The row of doors that formed the entrance sat, atop four short flights of steps, shaded by the storey above and flanked by plain, rectangular pillars._

_Finding the reading room was simple enough: if the signs were unclear people were always willing to give directions, if you were willing to ask, politely. Finding Ibrahim was another matter. It wasn’t that the room was terribly busy. It wasn’t exactly quiet, in the figurative sense of the word, of course, but it was easy enough to scan each face for the one they would recognise. Calvin knew Ibrahim from days before Juliet had joined the team: he had been a part of the team, working with them as an anthropologist studying the spread of humanity across the globe. As such, he had spent a lot of time working with Calvin on the evolution of different languages, and what they could tell us about the people who spoke them. He had been partly responsible for steering Cal down the philological path he was currently on. They had been friends. There was no way the two could be in this room and not spot each other. Juliet spotted the tell-tale tightening of Cal’s jaw and laid a hand on his arm._

_“Maybe he just stepped out for a minute,” she whispered, drawing him over to a desk. “He has to eat too, you know. And everything else.”_

_Cal nodded, but only once, and sat down beside her. Within a minute, his knee had began jumping. Juliet pressed it into stillness and glared at him. He held the glare for a moment, then rolled his eyes and gave up. Leaning down, he dragged his laptop out of his backpack. Juliet frowned and raised an eyebrow at him. Cal shrugged and waved an upturned palm at everyone else. Juliet rolled her eyes and removed a newspaper from her bag. This time it was Cal’s turn to blink and frown. It was a local newspaper. Juliet smirked and unfolded the paper. They had each been reading, with one eye on the movements around them, for a good ten minutes when Calvin felt a hand fasten on his wrist. He looked up, automatically glancing to the door they had entered by then turning to Juliet. She was staring at a news article. Wordlessly she passed it to him. He looked down, rearranging his brain to read Arabic rather than Latin characters. He felt his heart sink. The article was an obituary._

****

Nikko was dreaming. It had been years since he had last had The Dream, but the passage of time hadn’t changed it, much. Once again, he mounted the curving steps, letting Mikhail lead him away from his mother and the door. Once again, he saw the walls around him brighten, isolated shadows appearing where once there had been nothing but. Once again he turned, he ran, he stopped, he saw. Light filled the chamber, wrapping round his mother like mist. She disappeared into the light, engulfed as surely as if she had sank into a lake. Or an ocean. Time seemed to slow, the light creeping back to its origin like waves on a beach. A jet of light flared towards him… and stopped.

Nikko peered at the luminous tendrils, the walls around him, the ceiling, the floor. He became aware that he could move. He had never done so before. But then, he thought, time had never stopped in The Dream before. Tentatively, he reached a foot out sideways and stepped left. His perspective seemed to shift. The light seemed lower. Nikko frowned and looked to where he had been standing, then looked down. His younger self stood there, as frozen as everything else, one hand reaching out to his mother, and the light. Nikko looked back to the stairs. Mikhail, a hand raised to his eyes, was paused mid-step. Another frown tugged at Nikko’s eyebrows. He hadn’t seen Mikhail come for him. He hadn’t seen anything but his mother and the light until he woke up back at camp. Nikko turned back to the light. Maybe, then, he could get closer: find out what it was his mother had touched or done to set off the pulse. His eyes flicked back to his childhood self. Mikhail had been right: there was definitely a distinct jet of light reaching out to him. He followed the line of it back to the stone wall. It came from the half-dome of the sun symbol: the symbol he should have been able to see his mothers hand upon, but couldn’t. Even now, before the pulse hit him, she had been gone. There had been nothing he could do, neither then nor now.

Somewhere a weight seemed to lift from Nikko’s shoulders. He sighed and turned his attention to the glyphs around the sun symbol. There was something familiar about them. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. His mind whirred. He almost had it.

“Nikko!”

Nikko ignored the voice hissing into his consciousness.

“Nikko!”

This time the voice came with an earthquake, or at least a Nikko-quake. While his body shook, the scene around him stayed disconcertingly still. Again the voice called him, louder this time. Again his shoulders shook. His surroundings cracked, glitching like a poorly coded computer game, and vanished. He floated in darkness.

“NIKKO!”

Nikko woke up. He rolled from his stomach to his back and squinted up at his visitor. “Dad? What time is it?”

“Just after five,” Solomon replied, absolutely devoid of any hint of an apology. “There’s something you need to see.”

“It couldn’t wait until after breakfast?”

“I come bearing coffee,” replied Solomon, waving a mug under his son’s nose.

Nikko sat up, yawning. “It’s a start,” he groaned.


	26. “You’re up early!”

Nikko peered blearily at the vaguely familiar symbols on the paper before him. Eyes shining with the light of discovery, his father peered up at him.

“Do you know what this is?” Solomon asked eagerly. “Can you read it?”

“I… No… I mean, I think…” Nikko closed his eyes, pushing his memory back through the hectic few years just past. “It’s not something we’ve come across here, but I recognise it from somewhere.”

“It was in amongst some of your Mom’s papers,” offered Solomon.

“Mom’s?” Nikko looked up sharply. “But I’ve read all of Mom’s stuff: I never found anything like this.”

“Not those papers,” his father grudgingly admitted. “These are things I’ve kept to myself. Letters and such.”

“But Dad!”

“Letters to me,” Solomon hinted, cutting short his son’s admonition. “Private letters.”

“Oh,” Nikko’s eyes glazed in an effort to re-route his brain. “Yeah, you can keep those.”

“By the sounds of it you wouldn’t be able to read them anyway,” shrugged Solomon, rising and sitting down on the side of the bed by his son. “They’re all written the same way as this one.”

“Wait: so you can read this?” Nikko frowned, looking round at his father. “Then why ask me…”

“It was written for you,” replied Solomon. He leant over and pointed at the top line. “See that there? That says ‘Dearest Nikko’ right there.”

Nikko peered at the top line. “No, it doesn’t: it says ‘Dearest Nicholas’.”

Solomon smirked. “So you can read it.”

“Enough to know there are more than five letters in the second word!” Nikko countered. “I mean: some of the characters are familiar, but…”

“It’s been a long time since you’ve seen them, I know,” nodded Solomon. “Me too. I just wondered, when I saw it was addressed to you, if you knew it as well as I did. It was our code, you see: your Mom and me. We invented it. I never knew she taught it to you – or that she even thought about teaching it to you – until I found that.”

Nikko focussed his mind on his mother. She had taught him a lot in the short time he had shared with her. Things like the odd characters on the page before him, however, were not among the list of things he had made it a priority to remember. Things like the sound of her voice. He focussed on her voice. She was telling him the story, about the star that Sagittarius shot down. The frown deepened on Nikko’s face, brows drawing together and head tilting in mild confusion.

“What is it?” Solomon pressed, his voice hushed to avoid breaking the concentration so obviously written across his son’s features.

“I don’t know,” murmured Nikko. “Might be nothing. Might just be because we’ve been talking about it recently.”

“What?”

“I can’t remember ever learning the symbols individually,” he admitted and Solomon sagged a little. “What I do remember of them, the one time I can think of seeing them, was when Mom was telling me that story: the one about the star.”

Solomon patted his son’s shoulder. “That’s what it is.”

“Huh?” Nikko looked round, eyes wide, then down at the paper again.

“That’s what’s written there: the story,” his father explained. “The one about Sagittarius and the star.”

“Okay…” Nikko looked from the story to his father and back again. “And this is what couldn’t wait for breakfast?”

“Not exactly,” Solomon admitted. “At least, not just that. Here.” He handed Nikko another few sheets of paper. “I translated it. I didn’t want to wake you if I could do it myself. It was what I found that made me come wake you up.”

Nikko placed the original papers down on the bed beside him and scanned the translation. For the most part, it was the same as Nikko remembered. The lonely god asked Sagittarius to shoot down a star, and the god rode the star to Earth and went in search of a bride. That much he remembered clearly. There had been stories of the perils the god had encountered on his journeys, but this had most often been a bedtime story, and by the time the god began his wanderings around the world, sleep had at least fogged, if not erased, the memory of those tales. Here, however, he held the complete legend. At least, so it appeared. The list of travels and travails went on with an unsettling familiarity until, finally, his tasks complete, the god found his bride and settled down on Earth, living, and dying, as a human.

Nikko looked up from the papers. “Woah!”

“I know!” Solomon enthused. “Nikko: this could be the clue we’ve been looking for! All this time! All this time and it was right under our noses! Hidden away in your mother’s things.”

“Do you think she knew?” Nikko breathed.

“How could she!” Solomon shrugged. “We didn’t know then even half the stuff we know now. The crystal skulls, Antarctica: that all came later!”

“No, but…” Nikko floundered, waving the translation around in mid-air as he sought for words. “But Mom, this, the Sacred City: surely she must have known something in this was important?”

“Your mother liked to believe there was a grain of truth in every legend, and that that’s how the legend starts.”

“Dad, this is more than a grain!”

“Maybe that’s what she didn’t realise,” offered Solomon. “I don’t know: maybe she did know there was more to the story than just that.”

Nikko nodded, looking down again at the legend he had once loved to hear. When he spoke again, his voice seemed far away. “We need to tell the others.”

“I agree,” nodded Solomon. “We should get started on it right away.”

“No,” said Nikko, slowly, marvelling that he had to be the voice of reason at this juncture. “We should each go take a shower, get dressed properly, have breakfast and then get started on it. By that time, Vincent and Maggie at least will be awake, and you can go find Cal and Juliet.”

“Why me?” Solomon protested, laughing a little.

“Because I’m not gonna!” Nikko declared, standing and setting the translation down atop the original. “Now I’m hitting the shower and, Dad, I say this with love in my heart: you really ought to go do the same.”

Solomon laughed and rose. “Yeah, yeah: I get it. The old man stinks. Fine. I’ll see you downstairs.”

****

Juliet looked down at her notebook and sighed. The sigh became a yawn. She could still go back to bed. It was light outside, but still early. The nagging thoughts that had dragged her from sleep in the first place, however, would still be there. She tapped her pen on the pad. There were words dotted about the page, circled and joined with lines. The Templar scroll was one. The Wissembourg box was another. There was much rubbing out and changing of lines, but in the centre of the page, the word “Ring” was circled twice. At the bottom of the page, Juliet had written “Dorna” and circled it. Four lines led off of that circle, the first and straightest leading straight up to the Ring. The others led to the three items that had involved Dorna in some way: the Jerusalem finds, the Templar scroll, and the manuscript poor Ibrahim had contacted Professor Zond about. At the top of the page was a maze of circles and lines indicating the finds that Dorna had not interfered with, as far as she knew, and how they connected to each other and to the ring.

On either side of the word Ring were two separate articles: on the right, a circle encased the words “Ring legend”, a line with an arrow mid-way connecting it to the Ring; on the other was “Nikko”. The line that connected Nikko to the Ring had two arrows on it, in opposite directions, and the words “cause or effect?” scrawled under it. A solid line connected Nikko to the Egyptian box he had discovered in Wissembourg. Dotted lines picked their way through the tangle from Nikko to the Alaskan pyramid and the two finds that came directly from it. Juliet tapped the diagram again. Every find that was or possibly contained a part of the Ring had a link to Nikko. Those that didn’t either linked to something that did, like the tablet in the Wissembourg box, or formed part of the lower half of the page. Of the three finds there, all of which Dorna had been on the trail of, two connected directly to the legend of the Ring. The only circle not connected to either the ring or its legend contained the words “Jerusalem finds”. There had been a lot of artefacts brought home from Jerusalem, even with a brief tussle with Dorna there that had hastened the end of their work in the region. Some had been studied in detail since their return, but by no means all.

Juliet groaned and sat back. So Nikko seemed to have some connection to the Ring, but not the legend of the Ring. Surely that couldn’t be right? And Dorna were having more luck at present tracing clues to the Ring legend than to the Ring itself. That surely had to be down to the two main expeditions: she knew the Ring was their main goal. If they’d missed the clue that led Professor Zond and the others to Alaska, but spotted the one that took them to Jerusalem, would that be enough to explain it? She closed her eyes. Maybe if she just let her mind drift for a minute.

“You’re up early,” said a voice behind her, startling her into wakefulness.

Juliet blinked in the glare of bright sunshine. She couldn’t have fallen asleep, could she? Maybe she could have, she thought, rubbing her eyes. Sleep had been a fickle friend lately. She stretched and looked round. What she saw had the effect of three large espressos. Juliet floundered to cover her notes with her arm but it was too late. Nikko frowned down at the name peeking out from under her elbow.

“Why is my name in your notebook?”

****

Anthony Blake inspected his reflection in the mirror. It was early, but he couldn’t risk missing his target. She always stopped at the same coffee shop on her route to work. He would be there, waiting. If he got in before the crowds, he might be able to find a table that let him watch both the street and the interior. There was one he had in mind: one where she would have to walk past and turn around before she would see him. From then on, whether she went into the shop or not, he knew his next move. He would beg, he would plead, he would grovel if necessary! Whatever it took to draw her back to him, at least for long enough to find out what was going on in there and plan out the best time to put his other instructions into practice.

He had spent the entirety of the day before ensconced in his home office, memorising plots and plans, and was now confident he could find his way around any of the floors of the Veritas building. He had memorised the known security measures and taken heed of the advice on how to avoid them, bypass them, or detect others not listed. All that remained was to acquire some sort of update on the state of affairs in the building itself, and to somehow get close enough to Juliet to slip the button-sized device in his pocket into one of hers. Simple. He was ready. All he needed now was Juliet.


	27. “We need to talk…”

Juliet gaped awkwardly for a moment, then realised honesty was the best policy here. “I just… I noticed a sort of pattern. Something that was nagging at my mind, so I tried writing it down and, well, here it is.” She removed her arm from the book and handed it to Nikko. “I thought it was odd that, given your now obvious connection to the Ring and the fact that you always have some part to play in the finding of the parts of it, you didn’t have anything to do with the things we found in Jerusalem and Syria. Dorna showed up for all of those, but not you. Then I realised that, even though at least two of the three sets of finds were related to the Ring, none of them linked directly to it, but to the legends behind it.”

“Okay,” mused Nikko, scanning the page before him, “but why cause or effect? My abilities only showed up after we put the first three pieces together.”

“Did they, though?” Juliet countered, drawing a questioning frown from her old pupil. “Your ability to move things only showed up then, sure, but what about other abilities? Your Dad was on the trail of the Ring back when I was his student, and probably way before that too. He would talk about legends and what if they had just one grain of truth in them that then snowballed into mythic quality. Things like the fate of the Olmecs or the possible placement of Camelot.”

“Camelot’s not real,” interrupted Nikko with a slight laugh.

“Says the guy who moves things with his mind and seems to have some kind of magnetic link to the Ring of Truth?” Juliet pointed out. “How many things have we found that you didn’t think existed?”

“Okay, point taken,” admitted Nikko, handing back the notebook and holding his hands up in surrender. “But what’s this other stuff: the manuscript that you’ve got linked to the legend and the Jerusalem stuff?”

Juliet looked down at the diagram, a flash of remembrance resurrecting a stab of grief. She hadn’t known Ibrahim. She had only spoken to him once, via the satellite phone with Cal and the others before she and he had left Jerusalem. Cal had known him, though, as had Maggie, Vincent and Professor Zond.

“Do you know who Eratosthenes was?”

Nikko tipped his head to one side, surveying the ever expanding contents of his memory. “Dude who measured the circumference of the world, right? Lived in Alexandria? Liked prime numbers?”

“He was a little more than that,” laughed Juliet. “He ran the Library of Alexandria for a time, and he read a lot of the scrolls stored there. It was one of the greatest centres of learning and knowledge of its era, possibly the greatest, and Eratosthenes just loved learning. He even described himself as ‘Philologos’: the lover of learning. But he wasn’t just interested in numbers and geography: he read about all kinds of subjects. He was a Jack of all trades. Hardly anything is left of the Library of Alexandria, or of Eratosthenes writings, since it was almost all lost in the fire that destroyed the building. Ibrahim discovered a manuscript – we never did find out how – that he was certain had been written by Eratosthenes himself. That was what we were sent to Damascus to collect, but by the time we got there, Ibrahim was already dead.”

“Dorna?” Nikko murmured, only half a question.

Juliet nodded. “We think so.”

“So what did you do when you found out?”

****

_ Just over 6 months ago, 8 days after the fall _

_The library had that hush that pervades all libraries everywhere. It settled on the air like a blanket, warm and comforting to the bibliophiles and scholars in its embrace. For Calvin and Juliet, however, that familiar and relaxing near-silence had become stifling. Juliet slid her hand over Cal’s, easing apart the fingers that had tightened on the edge of the newspaper, crinkling its pages and turning his knuckles white. She could feel his pulse racing in his wrist and see the familiar profile of his face harden into a mask._

_“Come on,” she murmured, her voice as low and devoid of hissing sibilants as she could make it. “We’d better get out of here.”_

_He let go his hold on the paper, his hand briefly intertwining with hers. As mechanically as any robot, he closed the laptop and packed it away. Beside him, Juliet folded up the newspaper and stowed it safely in her bag. By the time she was on her feet, he was already heading for the door. She hurried after him._

_“Cal, slow down!” Juliet complained, dodging through the everyday pedestrians. “Come on: we need to talk and I can’t do that if I’m running to keep up with you!”_

_Wordlessly, Cal slowed his steps. His jaw was still tight. Juliet looked up at him and decided she had better start the conversation._

_“We should head to Ibrahim’s place,” she began, then stopped abruptly as Cal turned to her._

_“What for? We know he’s dead. Dorna are more likely than not the reason he’s dead,” he pointed out, almost hitting one of the passers by with an outflung hand. “And if Dorna are behind it, you can be sure they’ll have searched everywhere until they found the manuscript.”_

_“Yeah, they’ll have searched, but that doesn’t mean they’ll have found it!” Juliet countered. “They didn’t find the map in Paris, Nikko did.”_

_“Well, Nikko’s not here and we all know how that ended anyway! Either they’ve found it and we’re too late, or they haven’t and they’re watching and waiting for us to find it for them.”_

_“Maybe,” she shrugged, “but we could at least look! If you don’t you know you’ll always be wondering, and you won’t be the only one: Professor Zond will want to know what happened. He might even want to try and get it back from Dorna, which would be pretty difficult and really awkward if they never even had it in the first place!”_

_A short growl escaped Cal’s throat. He knew she was right. One way or the other, they had to know. With a sigh, he took hold of Juliet’s hand and led her across to the nearby park. It was a wide open area, especially at the beginning of February, with short-cropped grass and far-spaced trees making the most of the cloud-diffused sunlight. There were few places to hide from any of Dorna’s operatives that may be near, but likewise there were few places such operatives could hide from them. In the middle of the park, Cal halted and dug around in his backpack for their map. He had circled the library and their hotel, but nothing else. Juliet watched his fingers dart across the paper, moving from green space to green space until they found their landmark._

_“Ibrahim’s apartment overlooks El Jahez Park,” he explained. “He showed me the view from it once, when he moved in. Sent a picture of himself and his new view. That’s here. It’s not far. We’ll have to find out more when we get there.”_

_“Do you still have the photograph?” Juliet asked, tracing a route from where they were to where they were headed._

_“Not here,” replied Cal, shaking his head. “Not without secure internet access. I have a pretty clear recollection of it though.”_

_“Okay,” she nodded. “Let’s go see what we can find.”_

****

The team crowded round the table in the main lab, listening intently to the story read out to them by Solomon. There had been expressions of mild surprise when Antarctica was mentioned. With every coincidental adventure, those expressions grew ever more wide eyed and breathless. By the time Solomon reached the end of the tale, even Vincent was obviously aghast.

“How is this possible?” Maggie breathed. “Are you sure Haley wrote this?”

“The code is one Haley and I created, and only Haley and I knew, so yes,” Solomon nodded, “I’m sure she wrote this. What I’m not sure about is where she got the story.”

“She told me it was a family thing,” offered Nikko. “Her mother had told her the stories as a child, the same way she told them to me.”

“Except she never got the chance to tell you all of them,” sighed Solomon. He smoothed down the edges of the paper, as if through it he could reach out to Haley herself. Finding the legend itself had caught him off guard. He had expected only Haley’s letters to him in the pile of coded papers: something he hadn’t read in years, not even once since her death. They had been a moment of weakness: of indulgence where he could, for a little while, return to brighter days. He had brought them out with the rest of Haley’s papers, but hadn’t intended to actually read them. Not really. Perhaps as a last resort, just in case they made some odd reference that might be the missing jigsaw piece that revealed, if not the whole picture, at least enough of it to know what you were looking at. But then he had worked late, fallen asleep at his desk as he had so often used to do, and looked up on waking to see that clock. The ghost of memory had laid her hands on him and turned his mind to the letters, and the desire to hear her voice again had taken precedence over everything else.

“Well, if it was a family thing,” pointed out Cal, unfolding one arm to wave at the paper in Professor Zond’s hand. He got no further.

“All Haley’s family are long gone,” said Solomon, shaking his head. “At least all the family I knew about.”

“I only ever met her parents,” agreed Maggie, “although I think she mentioned an uncle or godfather somewhere.”

“Think you can find out which?” Solomon enquired, looking up to Maggie with a hopeful look.

“I can try,” she smiled back.

Maggie turned and headed off to her lab. Vincent, a thoughtful expression breaking through his usual impassive mask, also stepped away.

“I believe I may have a lead of my own to follow here,” he murmured. His eyes met Solomon’s for the briefest of moments, asking and receiving permission he had never really needed quite literally in the blink of an eye.

Nikko, Juliet, and Calvin watched him depart, then looked back to the Professor, ready and waiting for their instructions.

“Cal, Juliet,” he sighed, shouldering the yoke of leadership once more, “keep going with that translation. Once you’re done, compare it with my transcription of Haley’s legend and see what matches. Nikko, you and I are going through this story piece by piece and mapping all the links.” Solomon paused as Vincent passed the door on his way out and halted, catching his friend’s eye. The Professor winced, sighed and nodded. Vincent moved on. Solomon stood up. “You two will need the large desk here, so Nikko and I will work elsewhere.”

“Dad?” Nikko frowned. There were many rooms in his father’s house, but the only other table large enough to lay out a world map on was in the dining room.

“Come on,” said Solomon, leading his son out of the room. “There’s somewhere else we can work, and it’s time I introduced you to it.”


	28. “You always do.”

Vincent waited patiently in the ante-room. He knew his employer was a busy man, but he also knew de Molay trusted his judgement. If Vincent was here without an appointment, de Molay would know it was for a good reason. Nevertheless, a flicker of worry wavered in Vincent’s mind. There would come a time when all the secrets of Solomon Zond’s life and work would have to be told, at least to those in the team. Their group had not always been so small or so close. Others had come and gone. Maggie had been there at the start, but even she had taken some years away from the team. After Paris, many had left, finding the work too dangerous for their liking. It was one thing for their Professor to endanger his own life, but not theirs. To them it had been just another job, not worth getting killed over. Only Calvin and Maggie had remained. Juliet, of course, had been employed to take over Nikko’s education, but had stepped into the breach left by the departure of Lena and the others, already knowing more of the truth behind their search than most. He had stayed. If the job hadn’t been dangerous, there would have been no need for him there in the first place. That had left just six of them, each with slightly more or less knowledge of the whole story than the others, but enough in each case to keep them there despite the danger. Together, they had faced so many things, but it had only served to draw them closer. They were surely close enough now that the whole truth could be safely shared.

A bell tinkled and Vincent rose. He would report his news first, then ask his questions. Only once he was satisfied he knew the whole of the truth would he suggest sharing it with the rest of the team.

****

Nikko hadn’t moved. From his first step through the door of the fourth floor lab, his feet had been rooted to the spot, only his eyes moving forward to explore. Much of what he saw was new to him, but enough items sparked the familiar threads of memory that he could make a guess where it all came from.

“This was all Mom’s, wasn’t it?” Zond junior breathed. He swallowed and his face hardened. “Dad, I thought we agreed…”

“This had to be kept secret,” Zond senior cut in, hardly eager to rehash that old fight. “Dorna cannot know this exists. They think all of it was destroyed. The world thinks it was lost and never found. Even Maggie doesn’t know we’ve got it here. Only Vincent and us, and our benefactor.”

“Wait: so mystery dude gets to know but not Maggie, Cal or Juliet?”

“It was only with our benefactor’s intel that Vincent and I were able to recover what Dorna stole, and we made sure they would think the whole catalogue destroyed.”

Nikko strolled further into the room. Lined up on plain metal shelves like evidence in the depths of a police station, some under covers, some propped up to be perused without the need for touch, were sketches, descriptions, photographs, casts and copies, and even in some cases the originals.

“Mom’s lost artifact catalogue,” murmured Nikko. He paused by a detailed pencil sketch of a broken stela. “I forgot how good an artist she was.”

“We don’t have all the pieces,” sighed Solomon. “Most went to museums or our benefactor after she had finished working with them. They have since disappeared. Well, the museum ones anyway. I asked about the others, but he always steered the conversation away from them or just flatly refused to answer.”

“And that didn’t worry you?” Nikko blinked, shooting a sharp glance at his father. “Mom’s pieces disappearing from museums didn’t scream Dorna to you?”

“Of course it did,” Solomon sighed. “You don’t think we checked? Vincent and I chased down a paper trail a mile long before we even thought to check with our benefactor. When we did he assured us that the items were safe. I… We assumed that meant they had also made their way into his care, but there’s no way he’ll ever tell us definitively, one way or the other.”

Nikko reached the large table in the centre of the room where his father awaited him. Laid out on it was a huge world map. Pins already marked most, if not all, of Haley’s finds. At first glance, all Nikko saw was a riot of multicoloured map pins, but then he spotted the key, and the colours began to make sense. Blue pins marked isolated items that had turned up after being randomly discovered by a non-archaeologist. Red marked temples. Orange marked burial grounds. Yellow marked villages. Green marked private collections. Each pyramid had a small piece of ribbon tied around its pin. Every item linked to their nameless benefactor was marked with a black dot on the top of its pin. Nikko picked up one of the tied-on tags that linked the pin to the catalogue: the code on it was alpha-numeric. He recognised it as one his father still used. Number for the expedition, followed by the date on which the artifact was found, followed by a letter or two identifying the item itself.

Nikko stepped back, surveying the story of his mother’s archaeological life played out in pins and paper. He frowned.

“Dad,” Nikko wavered.

In an instant, Solomon was at his side. “What do you see?”

Nikko waved a hand in the direction of the map. “Some of these points. I know them – I mean, I think I know them – but they’re not right.”

****

Cal glanced over at Juliet, his hands pausing in their work. The scroll transcription was nearly complete, but in all the time they had been working on it, she had barely said a word.

“You okay?” Cal murmured, watching her face.

Juliet didn’t look up. “Just tired,” she replied. “Didn’t sleep too well.”

Cal glanced down at the meticulous copying and transcribing she was focussed on. Staring at Juliet’s hands, he chose his words with care. “I don’t think you should try to spy on Tony.”

Now Juliet did look up. The glare she turned on him was full of weary irritation. “Cal, we settled this. We need to know if…”

“Do we though?” Calvin cut her off. “With all that’s happened since, do we really need to know? This is way more important than we thought and then there’s Nikko’s stuff and his mom’s legend that Tony knows _nothing_ about…”

“Isn’t that all the more reason to find out if Dorna has a hand in this?” Juliet countered. “Every time we find a piece of the legend they’re there. Sometimes they’re around when we find a chunk of the Ring, but not always. When they are, though, it’s got something to do with the legend too. They went after the crystal skulls, but not the Wheel of Dharma. Antarctica, Paris, but not Alaska! Sure they were around when we found the Elm Island tablet and had it translated, but that turned out to have part of the legend on it! Why would they go after the legend but not the Ring?”

“But the legend is about the Ring,” shrugged Cal. “Maybe they think if they focus on finding just the legend, while we look for both, and other stuff besides, they’ll find the rest of the Ring before we do, then steal our pieces.”

“Why not just wait until we’ve found the lot and take it from us then?” Juliet pointed out. “Why bother going to the trouble of finding slivers of the legend if we’re already doing the work anyway?

“Maybe they don’t want us getting hold of all of it,” argued Cal, gesturing in the direction of the door and thus the archives. “We know the more pieces we assemble the more powerful Nikko becomes.”

“Do we?”

“It was only after we brought the Horus Wheel back from Alaska that he started moving things further away from him.”

“Coincidence,” replied Juliet, shaking her head, “not proof. Besides: I still think we’re missing something. I still think there’s a reason they’re after the legend. What’s in it other than the Ring?”

“I…” Cal paused and scrutinised Juliet’s face. It was her expression that had stopped him. It said plainly and clearly that she knew what they had missed, and that she was patiently waiting to see if he would spot it too. He had been given all the hints he was going to get. He cast his mind back, hearing the isolated pieces of the legend echo around his head, each meeting up in turn with their point in the complete version Professor Zond had read out that morning. There was something.

Finally, the penny dropped. “We need to talk to the professor!” Cal blurted, getting halfway to his feet before Juliet dragged him back down to his chair.

“No,” she said calmly, smiling now that she had won her point, “we need to finish this transcription and translation, then go tell Professor Zond.”

****

De Molay pursed his lips in thought. He had listened attentively to Vincent’s news. He had received clear answers to his queries. There was no doubt in his mind that he now knew everything Vincent did on the subject of the Zond family. His eyes strayed to the bookcase. Nobody knew of his knowledge of the legend, nor the existence, hidden in plain sight, of a written copy of the original tale. From the sounds of things, many details had been blurred by time and re-telling, many deliberately changed to suit it for a child’s bedside, but it was still largely the same story. Some landmarks may be difficult to pinpoint with the version the Zonds now held, but not impossible. Not if what he suspected of the boy were true. Both the security of the original and of himself depended upon Dorna’s ignorance of their true state. The former they thought destroyed, the latter they thought a loyal comrade. It was imperative that they continue in this belief for as long as possible. He tapped his desk with one finger, in a slow, steady beat. His eyes narrowed. He nodded.

“There is, I feel, no need to upset the status quo at the present moment,” declared de Molay, coming to the decision even as he spoke it. “At least as it pertains to my person. My part in matters has remained secret for good reason, and it is by maintaining that secrecy that I have survived these many years. I do agree, however, that the truth of your mission should be made clear to the Zonds, both father and son. From there, I leave it in the hands of yourself and the Zonds as to how much you tell the others. My name and status as a member of Dorna must remain known only to you, Vincent. As much as you may trust the rest of your team, you and I both know well the force that can be brought to bear on one when someone you care for is in the clutches of your enemy, be they friend, lover or family.”

Vincent sighed and bowed his head in agreement. Dorna would use any means necessary to achieve their ends, as he knew to his cost.

“Keep me informed, Vincent, as always,” ordered de Molay, signalling their interview was at an end. “Let me know if work on Haley’s legend stalls for any reason. I may be able to remove some stumbling blocks.”

“Then you do know more than you have yet told me of this?” Vincent accused softly, not yet rising from his chair.

“That is unavoidable, my friend,” sighed de Molay, leaning back. “To inform you of _all_ I know on the subject would take several lifetimes. If, however, I can match my extensive knowledge to the comparatively small gaps you need filling, I will endeavour to do so.”

It was, Vincent knew, as good as he was going to get. He nodded, rose, and turned to the door. His hand was rising to the handle when de Molay called his name. He let the hand fall and turned to face his employer.

“I would very much like to see an accurate copy of Haley’s legend,” he mused, as if in thought rather than directly to Vincent. Even de Molay’s eyes were fixed on the other side of the room instead of on his co-conspirator. “Not the transcribed version, the original. A photograph would be best, if the item itself cannot be brought my way.”

“I’ll do my best,” replied Vincent, bowing just a little.

“You always do,” de Molay answered, though his eyes never left the bookcase across the room. “You always do.”  
  



	29. "What changed this morning?"

_ Just over 6 months ago, 8 days after the fall _

_Calvin stood in the centre of the park, turning slowly. From her vantage point, seated on one of the multicoloured benches that lined the pathways, Juliet could see the trees, the apartment blocks, and the sprawling heights of Mount Qasioun rising behind him. Antennae sprung from its relatively flat top and tiny white boxes marked the far-off houses that clung to the mountain’s vertiginous slopes, piled up and daring gravity to just try and tear them down. As mesmerising as the view was, her eyes kept straying back to the lean figure a few metres away, examining the various views. If they would only just stray to his face it wouldn’t be so bad!_

_Juliet shut her eyes and turned her face to the warm sun, trying to think through what she knew of Ibrahim. Of course, most of what she knew was what Cal had told her, or what Maggie had told her of Ibrahim and Cal. Apparently practical jokes had been the order of the day when they had worked together, and Maggie had been able to fill her in on several of the occasions when each had tried to out-prank the other before she and Cal had left Jerusalem. Juliet smiled at the memory of one such story, imagining the scene filled with the laughter and smiles of a less serious time. How long had it been since she’d seen Cal laugh: really laugh, not the half-sarcastic chuckle he used now? How long since she’d seen him smile?_

_A memory flickered through her mind like a black fish in a dark pond, drawing her mind’s eye to it just as surely. Suddenly, she knew exactly the last time she had seen him smile. Suddenly, she was back there, with stars twinkling overhead, the air around them sparkling in clouds of gold. The memory hung there in her mind as immovable as the stars above: the memory of his smile, his touch, of feeling like she was, for once, exactly where she was supposed to be._

_“That’s it!” Cal’s voice cut through Juliet’s daydream like the last alarm that means you’re going to be late for work._

_Juliet looked round, hoping the slight warmth of the winter sun would help cover any blush that had crept across her features. Cal was standing with his back to her, his hands held up in front of him to form a frame. As she watched, he extended a hand backwards over his shoulder, pointing. Juliet hurried to his side._

_“That’s it,” Calvin repeated, turning to follow the line of his outstretched arm. “There. One of the top two floors, I’m certain.”_

_“Now all we need to do is get in there,” nodded Juliet. This time, when Cal began to walk away, she was ready for him. She caught his hand in hers. “Calmly, Calvin,” she chided, falling into step beside him. “Dorna may not be the only people watching the place. It’s not like Ibrahim’s death wasn’t suspicious.”_

_Hand in hand, they strolled through the park and across the road to the apartment block. Catching the door as it swung closed after another occupant or their acquaintance left, Cal waved Juliet inside and followed her. The stairs were their only option and, by the time they reached the first of the possibilities, Juliet was glad she had made improving her fitness one of her New Year’s Resolutions. They found Ibrahim’s name on a door half way along the corridor. If Dorna or anyone else had been there, it would take Vincent to spot it._

_Juliet closed the door behind them, slipping her lock-picks back into their place in her backpack. Cal was already picking his way through the room, studying as much of the furnishings as he could without touching them. Juliet pulled on her cotton gloves and began a more careful examination._

_The room wasn’t as beautifully decorated as their rooms at the hotel, but shadows of the designs lingered in an ornament here, a rug there, a mirror, a bookcase. Juliet ran her fingers down the side of a heavy, dark wooden frame encasing a photograph of a very muddy, but very happy, Calvin and Ibrahim. Between them they held an equally muddy rectangle of what appeared to be wood._

_“Guatemala, two thousand,” murmured Cal behind her. “That was our first big find. The fifth Mayan Codex. The one the world never saw, but we did. It went straight to our benefactor after we’d finished with it. You’d think there would be damage to it, buried in all that mud where we found it, but there wasn’t. The wood there splits right down the middle and comes off completely! It had its own case! Maybe once upon a time they all did and they just weren’t in them when they got lost, but this one was. It had pages of bark folded in between two panels of seasoned wood like a concertina, then the whole thing was placed sidelong into a wooden box that fitted together as perfectly as the stones in a pyramid! He must have had this frame and its case made to match the Mayan one.”_

_“You should keep it,” smiled Juliet, watching his face come alive again at the recollection of the moment. “The local police will have finished with this place and Maggie told me he didn’t have any family here.”_

_A lopsided smile found its way onto Calvin’s lips. He picked up the picture and held it by his face. “I guess at least I can prove I have a claim to ownership.” He slid the two halves of the case closed over the photograph and put it in his backpack. His hand came out holding his cotton gloves. “I’ll take the bedroom and bathroom. You take the kitchen and in here.”_

_The four-room apartment was simple enough to search, but the sun had set before they were ready to admit defeat and leave. By the time they got back to the hotel, they were yawning. As much as she had got used to having Cal nearby every night since they had left Jerusalem, which was the best part of two weeks now she thought about it, Juliet could not deny the thought of a soft mattress and plump pillow was far more enchanting than cold stone and a rolled up spare blanket. She said goodnight, closed her door, and kicked off her boots. She was asleep before her head touched the pillow._

****

Anthony looked at his watch. He had spent the entire morning sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, working on his laptop, consuming cup after cup of coffee. Breakfast had been hours ago now and his stomach grumbled its complaints every time a nearby customer sat down with food. His eyes returned to the street. He couldn’t have missed her. She was one of the most regular and organised people he knew. either she wasn’t heading in to work today at all, or she had never left. He knew the group had returned, early, from France, but there had been no sign of them jetting off somewhere else. He also knew that, should she choose to use it, Juliet had a room kept ready for her in the Veritas building. Her last words to him, however, gnawed at his mind and turned his thoughts sour. Would it be her room she had chosen? It was a perk extended to all employees of the foundation in case they, for one reason or another, had to remain on site overnight.

Blake swallowed down the last of his coffee, grimacing at the realisation it had gone cold. Work or no work, she had to eat, didn’t she? He closed the laptop and replaced it in his briefcase. That, then, was his new plan. If she was there, he would see her, even if it meant hammering on the door until that great oaf of a security guard threw him out. He would call her, aloud and on her phone, until she spoke to him. He would beg her to have lunch with him, to talk things through. He would throw himself at her feet, figuratively at least, begging her to take him back. Nobody could love her like he did! They belonged together! They needed each other! All he needed was her! And through her, he would find a way to introduce the tiny gadget his benefactors had sent him to the Veritas security systems.

****

It was heading for lunchtime when the Zonds descended from the top floor to the first, drawn by the news that Vincent had returned. Together they arrived in the main lab, where the rest of the team had already gathered.

“What have we got?” Solomon asked, looking from one face to another in turn.

“I got nothing,” shrugged Maggie. “Any blood relations of Haley’s are either long gone or completely off the grid. I can’t find any financial or other links that might suggest family friends or godparents.”

“The transcription’s finished,” breathed Calvin, leaning back in his chair, “but there’s still a way to go on the translation.”

“What we do have so far, though,” continued Juliet, scanning down her notes, “agrees with Haley’s account in general terms, but some of the specifics are different.”

Solomon nodded and looked to his friend and bodyguard. “Vincent?”

No knowing smile lifted the edges of Vincent’s lips. His eyes were steady and severe, and they held Solomon’s as surely as an anchor. “We need to talk.”

Solomon nodded. “My office then.” He turned briefly to the rest of his team. “Keep going with that translation. We’ll need it.”

“Professor Zond!” Juliet called, catching Solomon as he turned away. “I think I should move on to, or, well, back to, our original plan. The translation’s a one man job really: Cal doesn’t need me. Maggie can compare the two versions of the legend just as easily as I can. If I leave now I might be able to accidentally, on purpose, bump into Tony where he often goes for lunch. There’s a few places to try though.”

Solomon considered this, noted that Calvin was studiously avoiding his eye, and nodded. “Okay, go for it, but don’t do anything stupid: you don’t need to take any unnecessary risks here. Keep me informed. Let me know if you’re gonna be gone the rest of the day.”

Juliet nodded and Solomon pretended he didn’t hear the sigh from Calvin. He turned back to the door and headed out.

Vincent turned to follow him then paused. “Nikko,” he said, looking back over his shoulder, “would you join us, please.”

****

_ Just over 6 months ago, 9 days after the fall _

_Juliet awoke to the sounds of music and chatter coming from the courtyard below. The smell of coffee and food sent a message via her nose directly to her stomach and somehow the rest of her, without any recognisable input from her brain, sat up. The light was not as bright as yesterday, but it still stung for a moment. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and got up. Twenty minutes later, dragged on by the siren smell of coffee, Juliet found herself washed and dressed and waiting for breakfast in the courtyard._

_The food was excellent, just as the mouth-watering aromas had advertised, and Juliet was sitting, sipping her second coffee of the morning, before any thought of Calvin intruded on her mind. Weeks spent in the close confines of the many digs they had worked on had given Juliet an intricate knowledge of all her colleagues’ morning habits. Professor Zond was a night owl, always the last to leave the work table. Maggie and Vincent were morning people, Vincent annoyingly so: at least Maggie didn’t dish out gnomic wisdom when you yawned, or grin when she thought you weren’t looking! She was the periodic insomniac who slept better at work than in her own apartment, usually. Nikko was a law unto himself, as unpredictable as an earthquake and just as loud if he was on the floor above you. Calvin was… Well, Calvin was more or less what Juliet judged ‘normal’ – a word the very definition of ‘one size fits nobody’! He usually woke around the same time as she did, or slightly earlier, but he slept like a log until then, whether on a five star hotel bed, the jet, the ground, or a ridiculously small camp cot with his feet hanging off the end. It was one thing she had always envied about him. She checked her watch._

_Maybe she was worrying over nothing. He slept late some times, after all, and he might be on his way down any minute. She waited a minute. She took another swig of coffee. When was the last time he had slept this late, Juliet wondered? When had she last had to try to wake him up, at least when they weren’t having to make a sharp exit in the middle of the night? She cast her mind back. A pattern began to emerge. Cal didn’t cope well with losing people. Not people who were important to him anyway._

_Like old flames._

_Best friends._

_Juliet downed the rest of the coffee and stood up. Surely he wouldn’t? Not here, with one artefact in their care, another missing and Dorna lurking in the shadows? She pushed in her chair and headed for his room. Two doors down from hers, wasn’t it?_

_She found the room and hammered on the door with the heel of her hand. There was no hungover complaint groaned from the other side of the door. No sounds of movement either. Not even any snoring! He couldn’t have gone out early without her, could he? He wouldn’t. Would he? She counted her options. With no key, she could try to pick the lock, but his room, like hers, overlooked the courtyard and she would be seen by someone. She could try the Nikko approach, but the windowsills here were not quite as wide as they were in Paris and didn’t extend to the next room, let alone two rooms down. That left her with hammering on the door louder, which was painful; walking away and waiting for him to turn up, which was unthinkable; or enlisting the help of the manager, which was at least the socially acceptable option. If he wouldn’t help, she could work out a way to steal his keys later. She gave the door one last, rueful thump, then walked away. Just like Arnie, though, she’d be back._

****

Solomon Zond sat silent and still, his eyes focussed on a far corner of the room.

“So all this time, you’ve been working for the same guy my Dad works for, not for my Dad?” Nikko summarised. “And what: does that mean you get paid twice? Does he do this to all the archaeologists he employs? Or does he just not trust us?”

“It’s not about trust, Nikko,” breathed Vincent, still watching Solomon. “It’s about safety. Our employer only employs one archaeological team in this way: us. He has made and continues to make a sizeable investment in your father and his team. I am merely additional protection for that investment.”

“But what you’re telling me is,” said Solomon slowly, drawing out every word and every pause, “that the investment our benefactor has made in us is not because of my archaeological talent, but because of my name. My ancestry. Nikko’s ancestry. Something it seems he knows a hell of a lot more about than me, by the sound of it!” Solomon had risen with his words and voice, and now he stood facing the man he thought had been his closest friend. “Do you report back to him on everything or is it just the artefacts? Does he know? Did you tell him about Nikko?”

Vincent bowed his head a little, but held his friend’s gaze. “My mission was to protect you and Nikko from harm and report back to our benefactor on all progress with things he would not hear from you. Yes, he knows about Nikko. He was expecting this. He simply expected it in you, not your son.”

“He what?” Solomon and Nikko chorused, their voices as alike as their temperaments.

“Our benefactor is the keeper of much ancient knowledge and secrets. Secrets he has not, and most likely will not, share with me,” replied Vincent, watching father and son gently settle. “Not least among these is the source of this knowledge. There are things I know about him but am forbidden to speak of. Up until this morning, that included the complete nature of my mission here.”

“What changed this morning?” Solomon demanded, though in his heart he already knew the answer.

Vincent sighed and, for once, his countenance seemed to slip into one of sorrow, perhaps even regret. “This morning,” he said, “I told him about Haley’s legend.”


	30. "Hey, old man..."

Maggie followed Nikko through the corridors to the lift. Her eyes widened when she saw the top floor light up as their destination, but she said nothing. Whatever was up there, it seemed she would soon find out. The lift whirred in mechanical efficiency, slowing to a stop with the barest of jolts. The doors slid open to reveal Solomon, pacing the floor in a complicated bubble of dread and impatience.

Maggie waved Nikko away, and the movement seemed to knock Solomon out of his concentrated reverie. His hand dropped from his face and folded over his other arm, wrapping around his stomach like there were a thousand butterflies trying to escape. The face that looked up to Maggie was as conflicted as she had ever seen him.

She sighed. “Solomon?”

Solomon drew in a long, steadying breath through his nose and let it out in a single sigh. “Maggie,” he began, forcing himself to meet her expectant gaze. “There’s something you should know. Something I’ve been keeping from you, though I swear: I had my reasons.”

“You’ve been hiding Haley’s artifact catalogue up here,” Maggie told him, as placid as a lake under ice. She watched him gape like a fish and hurriedly re-route his chain of thought.

“Nikko?” Solomon muttered, waving a hand in the direction of the door his son had vanished through.

Maggie shook her head. “Oh please, Solomon: I know how hard you searched for it after it went missing. I remember how you chased every lead like finding it would bring back Haley herself. You put on a good show of giving up, cutting your losses, moving on, but you forget: I know you. I watched you and Haley fall in love. I was there whenever the two of you had a fight, ready to listen to you each vent, then watch you work out whatever differences there were. I was there when Nikko was born. I helped you talk Haley into taking some real time off as maternity leave afterwards. I helped Haley teach you how to change a diaper! I know there is no way you would give up on that search, unless, that is, you’d already found what you were looking for. What else would you isolate a whole floor for?”

Solomon’s shoulders sunk, his head dropping with them to stare at his shoes. “I should have told you. I’m…”

“You did what was needed,” Maggie told him. “I know who’s out there looking for this. If the world saw me believing you’d given up, then maybe they’d believe you’d given up.”

“Maggie…”

“I’m not angry, Solomon,” she said, holding up a hand, “but I have been waiting to take a look at the catalogue for quite some time now, so if you don’t mind…”

Solomon nodded, a lopsided grin curling one corner of his mouth, and pulled open the door. Inside, Nikko stood, peering at a large map, and Vincent stood watching the view from the window. When he turned, Maggie caught the fleeting expression disappearing from his quickly martialled features. She wondered at it, then put the thought away for later and turned to the shelves. A sparkle of blue caught her eye and she reached out a hand to a blue faience scarab, almost the size of her palm. Her hand paused in mid air and picked up the card beside the artefact rather than the artefact itself.

“This was one of our first finds,” she smiled, perusing the photographs on the card of every side of the scarab. The incised hieroglyphs on the belly of the beetle contained a cartouche. “A scarab from the tomb of Amenhotep I. The tomb still hasn’t been found, has it?”

“Not since then, no,” smiled Solomon, more at ease now. “Listen, Maggie, there’s a reason we’ve brought you into this now. There’s more you need to know.”

****

Juliet weaved through the ever bustling New York streets. She couldn’t exactly call Tony for her, their, plan to work, but if Vincent and Cal had been right, and Tony was being employed by, though not a member of, Dorna, then he may well have a similar plan in mind. Cal had been adamant Tony would try to get her back. Vincent had suggested she carry out her daily routine as normal and Tony would find her. While lunch was never exactly a routine for Juliet, she did have some eateries she favoured over others. She headed for the small diner she had visited most often with Tony. The sandwiches were great, the desserts were fantastic. The distance sucked. If she missed him there, she would be too late for lunch anywhere else without a Nikko-level excuse.

The diner came into view as Juliet turned a corner, and even from across the street she could see him. She halted, causing passers-by to bump into her in their unending rush to be elsewhere. Tony was sitting in the window, scanning the sidewalk every few seconds. He caught sight of her and stood up. Mind racing, Juliet scanned her options. She could keep going and tough it out: she wasn’t going to walk away from one of her favourite food providers just because her ex also happened to patronise them. She could head over there and straight to him: how dare he show up like this! Or maybe she should go straight for the jugular: she made a mistake, could he ever take her back? She could turn on her heel and walk back the way she’d came; but what if he didn’t follow her?

She looked at the street she’d just turned into and started walking down it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him hurry for the exit. It didn’t take long before the New York serenade of car horns heralded his crossing of the road. Even though she was expecting it, Juliet tensed and backed away when an arm grabbed her and spun her round.

“Juliet! Finally!” panted a flushed and flustered Anthony Blake. He made another grab for her arm, but she pulled it back out of his reach.

“We’re through, Anthony,” snapped Juliet. “We discussed this. I was crystal clear!”

“You discussed this,” pleaded Blake. “I just had to listen. Please, Juliet! Just hear me out! Let me buy you lunch, or coffee even! Just hear me out and I promise: if you still want nothing to do with me, I’ll go!”

Juliet rolled her eyes. This was too easy. Begging her in the street? That was surely a move straight out of a cheesy chick-flick! Maybe the others were right after all. “Fine,” she sighed. “One coffee. You say your piece, then I tell you where to go. Okay?”

“I’ll take it,” beamed Tony, sickeningly sycophantic. “Follow me: there’s a great little place just round the corner. You’ll love their coffee!”

****

_ Just over 6 months ago, 9 days after the fall _

_Juliet waited impatiently as the manager rapped politely on the door in a way that would barely wake Vincent, never mind Cal, and Vincent was the lightest sleeper she had ever met! She explained again that through their work together she knew that Mister Banks was not a light sleeper, but was one who would be awake by this time of the morning and would not have gone anywhere without her. The placid smile and vaguely knowing look of the manager was infuriating. Perhaps Mister Banks had gone for a stroll? Perhaps he was in the shower? Juliet assured him of the unlikeliness of both suggestions and the numerous others that followed. Eventually, after a time long enough for Calvin to have showered, dressed, packed his bag and left via the window had he been so inclined, the manager consented to unlock the door._

_The room might have been empty, but the strewn fittings and furnishings made it impossible to tell. Juliet raced in, calling Cal’s name. His drawers had been tipped out and lay scattered about bed and floor. The contents of his rucksack lay equally disorientated. The few cupboards in the room hung open, the furnishings pulled out from their accustomed places. Juliet ignored the manager’s protestations and searched through the ransacked room. The laptop was gone. She grabbed the rucksack and started packing Cal’s things back into it. It was the easiest way to spot what else, if anything, was missing. His notebook was gone too. His limited wardrobe was intact, if she included the recently washed things hanging up in the bathroom, save for the clothes he had been wearing yesterday. Juliet checked the bathroom, collecting its contents as she did so. The toothbrush was dry. That suggested he was taken last night, not this morning. The photograph of Cal and Ibrahim sat open on the dresser, oddly untouched by the destruction around it. She scooped it up and finished refilling the rucksack in record time. The manager was still expostulating when she thanked him and left._

_She hadn’t heard anything last night, but Juliet had dropped into slumber like a brick into a millpond. It was hardly likely she could have done anything had she been there, but the boys weren’t the only ones who knew how to fight. Not these days anyway. Either way, if she was right, Dorna had him. They would be after Ibrahim’s find. Knowing this meant they didn’t have it was small comfort when she considered Cal didn’t have it either. They would demand the find or his help locating it and he wouldn’t be able to give them what they wanted. Juliet shivered. She reached her door, unlocked it, stepped in and slammed it shut behind her. If they thought Cal needed persuading, Dorna wouldn’t balk at torture. She began packing her own things. If they thought hurting him wasn’t working, they might come after her. She could be no use to him if they caught her too, at least not before she’d had some time to make a plan._

_Juliet looked down at the bag she was packing and the one with Cal’s things. She couldn’t carry both. Not all the time. Plus, she had the scroll. Whatever it was, she didn’t want Dorna getting their grubby hands on it. Her teeth tugged at her lower lip in thought, then she dragged Cal’s bag up beside her own. With the laptop and his notebook gone, there was room enough for her own notebook and the scroll to nestle among the other contents. She moved the remaining food and a few other items across from his bag to hers. There was a locker room here where customers could store luggage safely. She would leave Cal’s bag there until she had him back or had to leave. The rest would go with her. The only way Dorna could have got into Cal’s room unheeded was through the window. She would start her search below it, and she wouldn’t stop until she found him._

****

Cal shifted uneasily in his seat. Maggie had disappeared upstairs with Nikko hours ago and she still wasn’t back. What worried him more was neither was Juliet. She hadn’t even called or texted, as the Professor had asked her to if she thought she would be gone the rest of the day. Of course, he reminded himself, he hadn’t seen the Professor in hours either. Juliet might have texted him, her boss, and not her boyfriend. The plan depended on Tony believing Cal was no longer her boyfriend after all. Well, one version of it did.

Footsteps sounded in the hall outside. Without thinking, Cal stood up, moving to meet the newcomer then wincing at the stiffness in his limbs.

“Hey, old man,” grinned Nikko, throwing an apple from hand to hand. “They say it’s all downhill after twenty five.”

Cal prepared to growl back a riposte, but his indrawn breath died on his lips when he saw Nikko pause and look around the room. Time froze. Cal knew what he was going to hear even before the words started forming in Nikko’s mouth.

The apple reached one hand and was still. Nikko looked directly at Calvin. “Where’s Juliet?”


	31. “Only if you get caught…”

_ Just over 6 months ago, 9 days after the fall _

_Juliet stooped to examine the scuffed and overlapping marks in the dust of the alley below Cal’s window. The footprints may not be clear, but something heavy, or someone, had definitely been dragged part-way across the narrow space. Juliet had learnt a lot from Vincent over the past couple of years, not least how to track some one or recognise the signs of their passage, but no matter how hard she looked, she could see nothing useful. Perhaps if Vincent had been here things would be different, but even if she called the Professor now, Cal could be dead by the time Vincent got here._

_Cal must have been unconscious when they dumped him out into the alley. Unconscious, but not dead, she hoped. There’d be no reason to remove the body if he was, besides: if they hadn’t found the document yet, they’d want him alive. Cal knew Ibrahim better than anyone. If anyone could work out where Ibrahim had hidden his find, it would be Cal._

_Juliet wondered what they’d do to him if he couldn’t._

_The sat phone rang. She straightened. Their daily briefing was overdue, and Professor Zond would be expecting to hear from both of them. How much should she tell him? There was nothing he could do from a distance and their dig in Jerusalem was important. Leaving it now might be something else Dorna were after by keeping Cal. They had enough flunkies to divide their forces, after all: one group here, trying to get Cal to help them find the Eratosthenes manuscript; another in Jerusalem, waiting for Professor Zond and the others to leave the dig there._

_“Morning Professor,” Juliet answered the ringing phone. She tried to force a smile into her voice. “Sorry we’re late checking in.”_

_“Everything okay there?” Solomon’s voice crackled through the device. “Did you find Ibrahim?”_

_Juliet bit her cheek. Lying to the Professor was never a good move. Lying about something he was definitely going to find out about was even worse. She sighed._

_“Juliet?” Solomon’s voice seemed louder, harder than before._

_“Dorna found him first,” she admitted. “We don’t think they’ve got the manuscript though.”_

_“That’s small comfort,” sighed Solomon. “Ibrahim was a good man and a great archaeologist. I was hoping this find would bring him back to join the team again. He’s, he was, one of few people in this world I still trust.”_

_Juliet murmured her agreement. With any luck she might just be able to get out of this conversation without telling a direct lie to her boss, at least one that was more serious than making excuses for Cal’s sore head._

_“How’s Cal taking it?” Professor Zond enquired._

_The other shoe had dropped. Juliet felt her whole body sag under the weight of her reply. “Better than last time.”_

_“That wouldn’t be hard,” muttered Solomon. “Is he there? Let me talk to him.”_

_“He’s not here right now,” answered Juliet. Here it came. She swallowed and took a steadying breath. “He’s following up a lead.”_

_There was silence on the other end of the phone. The kind of silence, at least, that you got when one person covered the mic with their hand and relayed the conversation to someone else._

_“Juliet?” Vincent’s voice made Juliet’s eyes widen. Lying to the Professor was one thing. Lying to Vincent was impossible. “Tell me what happened. Start from when and how you discovered Ibrahim was dead.”_

_****_

_Calvin’s hearing came back first, but the world sounded like it was underwater. His vision came back next, blurred shapes swimming into focus as the cotton wool feeling in his ears cleared. Finally, with sight and sound returned, he let out a quiet sigh. Then the pain came back._

_Wherever he was, he was bound hand and foot to something he couldn’t see; possibly a chair or bench of some description. He searched his memory for clues of how he got wherever he was. Nothing. He remembered closing the door of his hotel room behind him. He remembered dragging the photo of Ibrahim and him out of his backpack and setting it up on the dresser. He remembered looking at his friend… then nothing. That was it. They must have been waiting for him. Made sense. Why follow him all round the city when they could just wait for him to get back, hopefully with the thing they had been unable to find. He hadn’t found it either, though. Did they know that? Did it matter? Oh well: only one way to find out._

_Calvin groaned and forced himself to sit up. The reaction was immediate._

_“Doctor Banks, you are awake at last,” purred a silken voice. It wasn’t one Calvin recognised, but that meant little enough. The accent wasn’t familiar either. “I was beginning to think I would have to send out for some coffee, or perhaps a bucket of cold water.”_

_“I don’t know where it is,” Calvin rasped. His throat was dry. How long had he been out? There were no windows here that he could see. Was it morning yet?_

_“Ah, so glad that we understand each other,” smiled the unknown voice. It felt like the kind of smile you used to find lying on sandbanks along the Nile. “As erudite as you are, I’m sure you realise I will not be simply taking your word for it. You will lead us to the Eratosthenes manuscript, Doctor Banks, whether now or later: this I guarantee you.”_

_“You’ll forgive me if I disagree,” muttered Cal._

_A bottle of water was deliberately opened before him, the seal cracking loudly in proof of its safety. The water was held to his lips by someone behind him._

_“Drink,” ordered the voice, finally stepping into view. “We can’t have you getting dehydrated.”_

_Calvin took in the man opposite him as he drank. Tall, black haired, excellently tailored suit, maybe somewhere in his forties or fifties, tanned skin, and a mixture of facial features that could have arisen in gene pools anywhere around the Mediterranean. Not that that told you much these days._

_“Who do you work for?” Cal rasped, searching the lean figure for clues. How high up the chain was this guy?_

_“Whom,” corrected his captor, straightening his cuffs. “And please, Doctor Banks, do not play the ingenuous genius with me. You have already shown me you know why you are here, do not presume to convince me you do not know the organisation that now controls your liberty.”_

_“Dorna,” growled Cal, meeting the man’s steady gaze. There was no flicker of emotion there: no sign of surprise or amusement. “Last I checked, their thugs weren’t quite so well dressed, though. Who are you? Their lawyer?”_

_“You can call me Righetti,” replied the unruffled voice, “and while law is one of the degrees I possess, it is not my primary function within the organisation. No, like you, Doctor Banks, and like the estimable Eratosthenes, I am something of a polymath. Indeed our intelligence is not the only thing you and I have in common.”_

_“You are nothing like me!” Cal hissed._

_Righetti’s elegant mouth curled into a smile. “Is that so?” He stepped forward and reached out a hand to the bound man. Cal’s scream echoed around the room. “Perhaps you are right, Doctor Banks,” he mused, wiping blood off his exquisitely manicured hands. “I can, it appears, endure far more pain in silence than you, for instance. I can also, quite happily, inflict more pain than you, Doctor Banks; especially in your current position.”_

_Between laboured breaths, Calvin dragged his eyes up to meet Righetti’s. “Inflict away,” he gasped. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. Even if I did know, I still wouldn’t tell you.”_

_“Ah, the noble knight errant. How clich_ _é_ _d! How predictable!” Righetti laughed. “Perhaps you can predict my response?”_

_A cold dread settled on Calvin. He hadn’t seen any sign of Juliet. That had led him to hope she had escaped Dorna’s attentions. Was she here too? Hidden in some separate room, waiting to be brought out as leverage? A sudden movement of Righetti’s hand to his pocket drew Cal’s mind back to the man before him. Righetti was fiddling with a mobile phone. It, like everything else about the man, looked expensive._

_Righetti turned the display to face Calvin. On it there was a photograph, small but clear. It showed Juliet, stooping down to examine the dust in an alleyway._

_“Do not fear, Doctor Banks,” purred Righetti. “The delightful Ms Droil is quite safe… for now. We have our eyes upon her, however, and it would be but a moment’s work to ensure her introduction to this charming little gathering.”_

_“If you hurt her…”_

_“You’ll what?” Righetti laughed. “Doctor Banks, you cannot even defend yourself. If you wish to ensure your colleague’s safety, I suggest you begin considering where your friend may have hidden his little manuscript.”_

****

“How long has she been gone?” Solomon demanded, ignoring the fact that his son had been either unable or unwilling to stop Calvin following him up to the top floor.

“Since lunch, just as we planned,” murmured Calvin, wide eyes flitting from artefact to artefact. “Hey, Professor, what is all this?”

“Something we’d planned to introduce you and Juliet to when she got back,” supplied Vincent, placing a steady hand on Cal’s shoulder and pivoting round to the lift. “Something that is of less import right now than Juliet herself, and for that we need my computers. Come: my office. You can tell me more on the way.”

By the time they reached Vincent’s office, Cal had recited the latest version of the plan as he and Juliet had discussed it: the eateries she would try and in what order. He listed names and streets in route order like a priest reciting his creed. All the while Vincent sat at his keyboard and typed, lines of code flickering across the screen at a rate few of the others could keep up with. Maggie, watching in silence from the back of the group, raised an eyebrow. Nikko, sidling forward to look down over Vincent’s shoulder, raised both.

“Dude!” Nikko murmured in appreciation. “Are you tracing Juliet’s cellphone?”

“Isn’t that…” Solomon began, but Maggie cut in.

“Illegal? Only slightly,” she shrugged, smiling. “And only if you get caught.”

“Besides,” added Vincent, without looking away from the task in hand, “I am not tracking Juliet’s cellphone. I am tracking her keychain.”

Nikko and Calvin exchanged frowns behind Vincent’s back.

“You all have the same keychain attached to your keys for this building,” explained Vincent. “There is a transmitter in each one. They were designed so that, should any set of keys be mislaid, or even misappropriated, they could be speedily located. Happily, the same can also be said of any bearer of the keychain should they themselves be, well, misappropriated.”

A map of the city blinked up onto the screen, a blue dot flashing to the right of Manhattan. A series of pins popped up one after the other as Vincent entered the names of the cafés and restaurants Calvin had listed. None were anywhere near the blue dot.

“That’s Greenpoint,” muttered Solomon, half to himself. “And there were no other places on that list, Cal?”

Calvin shook his head. “None. There’s no reason she’d be in Greenpoint right now. Well,” he corrected himself, “no good reason!”

“So let’s go get her,” exclaimed Nikko, turning on his heel only to be stopped by his father’s hand on his shoulder. “What? There’s no way Juliet’s there by choice: she said she would text if she wasn’t coming back this afternoon and she hasn’t!”

“That doesn’t mean we go running off without any idea what we’re running into,” growled Solomon. “I know you want to get Juliet back safe: we all do. So let’s look before we leap.”


	32. "Both archives?"

Greenpoint was, well, not green. Not exactly. Not unless you counted the peeling paint or the graffiti on the silent walls or construction billboards. There were parks at some points and trees in most residential streets, but out by the East River, where the previous year’s rezoning had triggered the transformation of unused buildings into whatever the developer had planned, trees didn’t get much of a chance. Nevertheless, graffiti and development work aside, it wasn’t the first place that would have sprung to Cal’s mind as a hideout for kidnappers. Maybe that was the point.

He shouldn’t be here, he knew. He should leave this to Vincent: the professional. But then Nikko had announced he was going and, superpowers or not, it would be a cold day in Kansas before Cal let Mini-Magneto go rescue the woman he loved without him. And so there were three. Three completely normal, not at all suspicious, guys of varying ages wandering around a deserted building site still waiting on the deadlock that was building permits. Yeah: not suspicious at all!

“You’re almost there,” murmured Maggie over their earpieces. “Just up ahead, on your right. There! Stop! The signal is directly to your right now.”

At the forefront of the little trio, Vincent paused and turned right. An unbroken line of wire fencing met him, each section covered over with plywood boards plastered in promises and projections, posters and polythene.

“Okay, David Copperfield, you’re up,” grumbled Cal, stepping back.

Nikko raised a hand, but found his mentor lowering it without a single glance in his direction.

“Or,” suggested Vincent, raising his other hand to point further down the temporary palisade, “we could just use the gate five panels down.”

“It’s still gonna be locked,” shrugged Nikko.

“Quieter to open though,” Vincent pointed out, leading the way. “Also, it has the benefit of not letting our enemies know our strengths. When dealing with Dorna, it is better to play one’s cards extremely close to one’s chest!”

“Hey, I’m a great poker player!” Nikko joked, following Vincent.

Cal trailed behind them, only half an ear listening to the conversation that rattled back and forth between master and pupil. He scanned the boards. There was nothing there that might give some clue why Juliet’s keychain, and hopefully Juliet, were here. Beyond it being a building site on hiatus, he could think of no reason for this choice of place. Worse: he could think of several reasons why a building site on hiatus was a perfect choice, and most of them did not end well.

They came to a halt outside the chained and padlocked gate. Vincent slipped a discrete roll of tools from his pocket while Nikko completed his catalogue of self-aggrandisement.

“Your first mistake, Nikko,” Vincent smirked, crouching down to the lock, “was in assuming the game was poker.”

_ 9 days after the fall _

_Calvin Banks shifted his weight and groaned. There really was no comfortable way to sit when your arms were tied behind your back and even breathing hurt. It wasn’t all thanks to his elegant host, of course: falling down a hole in the middle of nowhere, landing on a pile of rubble and spending the week afterwards sleeping on cold, hard rock floors didn’t exactly help matters. He had to admit: this guy at least had more than one song in his jukebox. The initial questioning had been followed with the clear and intricate detailing of Juliet’s efforts to find him, which had been followed by the obligatory bad guy beating, which had been followed by his current state of painful boredom. Or maybe that’s how things had started and he’d come full circle, he wasn’t sure. A lack of consciousness can do that to you._

_“Ah, Doctor Banks, you are awake this time, excellent!” Righetti’s voice crowed from the doorway. “I am so glad that my security team paid heed to my warnings when they first brought you to me: you are so difficult to question when you are unconscious.”_

_“Go to hell,” Cal snarled, wincing at a sharp pain in his ribs. Was it cracked or just bruised?_

_“Now, now, Doctor Banks,” smirked Righetti, coming to a halt in front of him and placing a chair opposite him. He waited until Calvin’s eyes settled on the chair. “Oh, your friend is still at liberty,” he assured his prisoner. “At least for now. She is quite adept at translating dead languages perhaps, but sadly less so at locating soon to be dead colleagues.”_

_Cal shook his head and laughed. “You can’t kill me: you need me to find the manuscript!”_

_It was Righetti’s turn to laugh. “I believe the missing word in that sentence is ‘yet’! As you have undoubtedly surmised, once you are of no further use to us your death will surely follow and the next your friends hear of you will be as another sad obituary in another local newspaper, nothing more. I am perfectly well aware of your intelligence, Doctor Banks. I realise fully that the delay of such an outcome is sufficient motivation for you to withhold from us the answers we seek. What you appear to be unaware of is this: while your own life may be destined to reach its end soon, the life of your friend and colleague still hangs in the balance. At this present moment in time, she is following a lead through the labyrinth that is Al Midan: one of the oldest parts of the city. It would be so easy for her to simply,” he paused to shrug, “vanish!”_

_Calvin’s jaw tightened, all trace of laughter and scorn freezing into the icy depths of certainty: a certainty that Righetti would snuff out any life that stood in his way without the slightest quivering of conscience, but also that he would use any means necessary to bend that life to suit his purpose first. There was always, of course, the possibility that he was bluffing, at least as far as his knowing Juliet’s location, anyway. Could he really take the chance that he wasn’t?_

_“You’re bluffing,” Cal spat back, shaking his head. “You have no idea where Juliet is. If you did, she’d be here.”_

_“And lose one bargaining chip? Tut, tut, Doctor Banks,” sighed Righetti, seating himself in the chair. “You forget, once the lovely Juliet is here, the only way out of here will be the same way as you: as a corpse. You barter for her life just now Doctor Banks. If we have to bring her in here, you will merely be bartering for the manner and speed of her death.” Righetti stood and straightened his suit. “I advise you to consider your position with care, Doctor Banks,” he said, peering down at his prisoner, “or the next person you will see sitting in that seat will be your friend.”_

****

The gate swung open. Vincent led the way into the building site. Builders huts, portable toilets and the other regalia of a project paused midway adorned the razed expanse before them. Ignoring the flapping plastic and abandoned materials, he turned to the nearest of the huts, some five panels back the way.

“This looks about right,” murmured Vincent, heading for the hut without a backward glance.

“Only one possible place available,” replied Nikko. “Doesn’t strike you as odd?”

Vincent paused. “We have no reason to suspect Blake knew anything about the transmitter,” he reasoned. “Juliet didn’t.”

“We have no reason to assume he didn’t,” countered Nikko. “Look who he’s working with! I dunno, man: this feels too easy to me.”

“Yeah, well either way, it’s the best lead we have,” Cal scowled, striding ahead, He reached the door and tried the handle. It was locked. He stepped back, ready to kick the door down if necessary. Vincent’s hand fell on his shoulder.

“Patience, Calvin,” sighed Vincent. He let Nikko lead Cal back down the short flight of steps and retrieved the lockpicks from their pocket again.

The few seconds it took Vincent to pick the lock felt like hours to Cal. The time between his raised hand, warning them both to stay back, turning to beckon them onward felt like an eternity. Even so, Calvin was the first to Juliet’s side dragging the gag from her mouth and begging her to wake up. It didn’t take much for her to come round, and by the time she did, her hands and feet were free of restraints.

“My keychain?” Juliet blinked, frowning at the three men crouched around her. She reached into her pocket and dragged the item forth. It dangled silently on its loop. “Wait, where’s my key?”

Nikko and Vincent exchanged glances. Vincent got up and hurried outside. He was putting his cellphone away when Nikko caught up with him.

“You were right,” he admitted to his pupil. “It was too easy. She’s a decoy.”

****

By the time the four got back to the Veritas building, the deed was done. The door hung open on its hinges, but beyond that nothing seemed out of place until they reached Vincent’s office, where a Maggie lay slumped over the desk and Solomon lay motionless on the floor, blood oozing from his scalp and cheek.

“Dad!” Nikko shot forward, dropping to his knees by his father.

“Careful, Nikko,” warned Vincent, taking in the scene piece by piece. “Don’t move him. Head injuries can be tricky.”

“Maggie’s okay, just unconscious,” reported Juliet from the desk. “It looks like he used a taser. She should come round soon.”

“Call an ambulance,” ordered Vincent. “Technically, they both should be checked out, but Solomon is the priority. You two stay here. Calvin, come with me.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster if we split up?” Cal queried, following close on Vincent’s heels.

“Why?” Vincent replied, hurrying through the halls with watchful eyes. “We know where Blake was going and it looks like he did too.”

“Huh?”

“Look around you, Calvin,” chided the expert. “Nothing is out of place. No evidence of a hurried search. The only reason we had to believe Blake had been here at all was the door, and the fact neither Maggie nor Solomon were responding.”

They reached the main lab, where Juliet and Cal had spent the last day and a half translating the scroll of parchment from the hidden room. It was gone. So were the piles of notes that had been left, forgotten, on the table beside it when Juliet’s absence became an issue.

“Tell me you locked the scroll back in the laboratory safe, Calvin,” murmured Vincent, inspecting the empty desk.

“It’s gone,” stated Calvin, shaking his head and stepping back. “They’ve got the scroll.”

“The translation too,” added Vincent, “unless you thought to lock that away before going after Juliet.”

Cal floundered. The desk was empty. The pile of scribbled notes were gone. All the work they had done: gone. On its way to Dorna. Perhaps even already there. Calvin backed away further, bumping into the doorframe. He blinked, frowned, looked down, and reached for his back pocket. His hand came back holding his notebook.

“Huh!”

“Huh, what?” Vincent prodded. He walked over and took the book from Cal’s unresisting hand. Without waiting for permission he flicked through the small book. “What’s this? Shorthand?”

Cal shook himself, like a man waking from a dream, and leant back against the wall with a sigh. “That’s just my writing when I write fast. It’s also the second translation of the parchment.”

“Second translation?” Vincent looked up.

“We screwed up,” Cal explained. “Tired minds make mistakes. Also translating unfamiliar languages from unfamiliar scripts that have little or no vowel symbols is really hard. Once we finished the first translation, some things didn’t make sense, so we started again from scratch. Well, from the computer transcription, anyway, checking it again as we went. Once some of the later parts of the scroll were translated, you see, it gave us a better idea of what the earlier parts ought to be. The notes on the table were Juliet’s. We had them there to refer to for context and comparison and so on. We were pretty much done with them when she left me to complete the new translation when she went to meet Tony, so the first translation was still on the desk, with the scroll, the second one is all in here.”

“Hey,” said Juliet, walking up to the doorway and slipping her arm around Calvin’s back. Her head came to rest on his shoulder. “Maggie’s awake. Says she’s fine, just a headache. Solomon’s still out. Ambulance is on it’s way. Nikko’s with them.”

“We should check the rest of our recent finds,” mused Vincent. “I will check the security for the archives, both of them. You two check the items on this level. Meet me in the office when you’re done.”

With a nod from Juliet, Vincent was gone. Calvin still stood staring at the notebook Vincent had returned to his hand.

Juliet looked up at him, frowning. “Both archives?”


	33. "I know a guy..."

“You okay?” Juliet murmured, passing a plastic cup of hospital coffee to Calvin.

“Hmm?” Calvin blinked and dragged his eyes away from the blank wall opposite. He took the cup from Juliet. Its heat brought him back to the world around him. “Trying to remember the first translation of the scroll.”

“Why?” Juliet frowned. “We know it’s wrong. Dorna don’t.”

“Maybe not, but it didn’t exactly take us long to figure out the mistakes,” shrugged Cal, taking a tentative sip of the lava hot dishwater that passed for vending machine coffee. “We can’t assume they won’t. They’re not just bad guys, they’re bad guys with brains, remember. And who knows how much experience and other knowledge that we don’t have.”

“Hmm,” Juliet agreed. “Any word on Professor Zond?”

“Not back from the brain scan yet,” Cal replied. “Maggie’s with Nikko. Still says she’s fine. Won’t let us get anyone to check her over.”

“Vincent?”

“Don’t know. Said he’d be back soon.” Cal leant over and dropped a kiss on Juliet’s head. “Thought I lost you.”

“You won’t lose me,” murmured Juliet, sliding closer to him until his arm automatically lifted and wrapped around her. “Your magic voice said so, remember.”

Cal’s eyes closed. His fingers wrapped a little more tightly around Juliet. His body froze next to her.

Juliet looked up at him, studying his face for clues. “What? What’s wrong?”

The breath that had stalled in his lungs came out ragged. The other shoe had dropped. “The voice said we would end up together,” he admitted, not daring to look round. “It didn’t say for how long.”

“What?” Juliet frowned, turning his face to hers. “What does that mean?”

“It means this isn’t a fairy tale,” sighed Calvin, wrapping his fingers through the smaller ones resting on his cheek and kissing her palm. “It means there’s no such thing as happily ever after. There’s just happily for a while, and who knows how long that while might be, or how short. Look at Professor Zond and his wife: they ended up together. Didn’t last forever: nothing can. It means that while you were with Tony and not me, I knew you were safe, because I knew ‘Us’ was still in the future. Now we’re together, that future is here, and I’ve no clue how long it may or may not last. All bets are off.”

****

De Molay wasn’t happy. To be honest, that was an understatement. Vincent had expected nothing less, though. The news that the translation on its way to Dorna was flawed helped calm his employer’s simmering anger, at least. His report of his findings at Blake’s apartment were another matter. He had been too late once again. Too late to prevent the transfer of goods from Blake to his employers, and too late to prevent Blake receiving his final payment from them: a bullet through his skull. He had found one useful item, in his rapid search of the dead man’s rooms. While Dorna had scrubbed his laptop and desktop, destroyed his phone, and removed any visible sign of their link to Blake, they had missed the thin, rolled piece of paper concealed inside the fountain pen in his shirt pocket. It had struck Vincent as an odd item to carry when robbing such an institute as Veritas. Sure enough, wrapped around the ink reservoir, he found the list. It named and described several items in detail, and, underlined at the top, were the words ‘scroll of parchment with leather case plus any notes on its contents’. Second on the list was a ‘Greek scroll of papyrus from Library of Alexandria’ that could only be the manuscript Calvin and Juliet had retrieved in Damascus. That, at least, had not been found.

Vincent was not a fan of hospitals. They were necessary, true, and did much good in the world; but they were also too anonymous, too full of corridors and stairwells to get lost in, or ambushed in, and far too full of innocents who might find themselves in harm’s way. His eyes flitted from one opening to the next, one face to another, until he spotted the familiar forms seated in the waiting area.

“Any news?” Vincent asked the pair, keeping his back to the wall opposite.

Juliet shook her head. “Still waiting,” she replied. “Did you find Tony and the scroll?”

“Tony, yes. The scroll, no. Dorna got there first,” reported Vincent. “Let’s just say he won’t be kidnapping anyone again. Ever! I did find this though.”

He handed the roll of paper to Juliet. She and Calvin unrolled it and scanned its contents.

“This is everything we have that has anything to do with the Ring,” Calvin exclaimed, “and a few others! And the Eratosthenes manuscript is second? We looked at that months ago: it’s unique, but it has nothing to do with the ring!”

“Maybe they want to sell it: it would raise millions of dollars on the black market,” suggested Juliet.

“Dorna don’t need to steal to raise funds,” murmured Vincent, “They have enough resources, believe me!”

“Maybe there’s something we missed,” mused Calvin. “Once we realised what it was, and that it was stable, we put it to one side to focus on the Jerusalem finds; then that led us to Alaska and so on.”

“Dorna went after these two items together,” Vincent pointed out. “They knew the location of the Templar scroll even when we did not, and they moved in there at the same time as others in their organisation went after Ibrahim. It is only by chance that both items found their way into your hands instead. Dorna came after our finds at Jerusalem too, but they waited for us to do the heavy lifting first. What is different about these two?”

Cal and Juliet exchanged a glance.

“We were going to tell the Professor when we finished the translation,” began Juliet.

“We don’t think Dorna are going after the Ring,” continued Calvin, “at least not directly.”

“We think…”

The rattle of wheels turned into the corridor and Juliet broke off, looking round then rising to her feet and dragging Cal with her.

“Professor Zond!”

Solomon Zond lay still and silent on the bed, alive, but unconscious. The hospital porter and a doctor steered the bed round the corner into the empty private room. Vincent, Calvin and Juliet followed them in, but were stopped at the door by a wave of the doctor’s hand.

“Dad!” Nikko exclaimed, pushing himself off the wall of the small room. “Dad, can you hear me? He’s still out. Why’s he still out? What’s wrong?”

Raising placating hands to the young man, as the orderly fixed the bed into place, the doctor led Nikko to the side. “Your father is in a medically induced coma. He has some swelling that is putting pressure on his brain. This should help relieve that pressure and allow the swelling to go down without causing too much damage.”

“He has brain damage?” Nikko blurted, latching on to two familiar words from the jumble.

“Not much, and not permanently if this works,” replied the doctor. “The brain is a highly complex organ, constantly producing new pathways. Your father received what we call a traumatic brain injury. Some damage is to be expected. That may take the form of mild post-traumatic amnesia that has no long term repercussions, or may have more serious consequences.”

“Such as?” Maggie asked from the one seat in the room, having already been declared ‘family’ when the ambulance first arrived at the hospital.

“The worst area of damage was the left temporal lobe,” explained the doctor. “One of the functions associated with this is recall of general knowledge. Specific facts like how many planets are in the solar system, what a giraffe is, that sort of thing. If there is damage to the area, the patient may have difficulty accessing those facts. In many cases, the brain can form new pathways to access the information, but in worst case scenarios the information has to be completely relearned.”

“I see,” nodded Maggie. “When will we know?”

“The truth is, we won’t know for sure until Professor Zond wakes up,” admitted the doctor. She turned back to Nikko. “Please, do not assume the worst. It is a possibility, and one which you do need to prepare yourself for, but it is also just that: a possibility, not a certainty. Your father’s chances are good, but we do need to keep him like this for some time if they are going to be as good as we can make them.”

“How long?” Nikko asked, swallowing.

“How long is a piece of string?” The doctor offered a comforting smile. “We will be monitoring his progress constantly. The next day or so should tell us more. Now I know you will want to spend some time with your father, but please be assured: we will contact you before reducing his medication, and it will take some time once we do that for him to wake up. You can take time to rest, eat and go about whatever else you have to do at home or work.”

When the doctor left, the others crowded in, demanding information. It was Maggie that filled them in though. Nikko stood, as silent and still as his father, holding on to Solomon’s hand. Update complete, silence descended on the room. Eyes shifted from Solomon to Nikko, to Maggie, to Vincent. Eventually, it was Calvin who spoke.

“Dorna are going after the Sacred City,” he announced. “Not the Ring. Juliet spotted a pattern. We were going to tell, well, everyone, once we finished the translation.”

“The Sacred City?” Maggie frowned. “Where Haley…”

“Where my Mom vanished,” finished Nikko, his voice leaden. “You’re telling me this city is what they’ve been after, all this time? Not the Ring we’ve been busting our asses to get before they do? This city, that has already cost me one parent, is why the other is now lying in a coma?”

“Why chase after the Ring when we are already doing all the hard work,” mused Vincent. “Much easier to let us assemble the Ring, then steal it from us.”

“But the more parts of the Ring we get, the stronger Nikko becomes,” pointed out Cal.

“No, but they don’t know that,” corrected Juliet. “They don’t, do they, Vincent?”

“No, my source says they do not,” he confirmed. “What are you thinking?”

“What if we’ve got it backwards,” she continued. “We translated conduit and thought it meant Nikko: what if it’s the other way round. What if the Ring is the conduit: the thing that lets the bearer control or access their powers. What if the Sacred City is the source of that power. In Haley’s story and in the Nabatean version, the lonely god wandered the world in search of companionship. He endured all manner of hardships and trials that would have killed an ordinary human being. When he found the companionship he was looking for, however, he set his immortality and his powers aside and became human. We’ve been thinking he put his power in the Ring. What if he put it somewhere else? What if he hid his power in the Sacred City? I think that’s what Dorna is after. Get to the source first, get the power. Then, when you have the power, go after the thing that lets you control it!”

“But they don’t know Nikko already has that power,” added Calvin. “If he has it, then there’s nothing for them to find. We win: they’ve already lost the race!”

“No,” murmured Nikko from his father’s side. All heads turned to him.

“Why not?” Vincent asked softly. “What are _you_ thinking?”

Nikko was already studying his father’s features as if they were a puzzle waiting to be put back together. He looked down and let his eyes fall closed. “I can’t heal him,” he admitted, as if confessing to a crime. “Believe me: I’ve tried. If I had the powers of a god, I’d be able to do more than just move things with my mind. I’d be able to heal him, like I was healed when I got shot. I can’t.”

Juliet shrugged. “Maybe, if the Ring were whole…”

“No,” Nikko shook his head again. “It’s not that. At least: not just that. Why would anyone, human or god, hide all that power in the one place, but the thing that lets you control it in so many different places? You’d do it the other way round, wouldn’t you? I think he did both. I think he split the ring, but also split the power. I was dying in Siberia, but then I found that cave, a cave with legends about it saving lives, and mine was saved. I think, maybe, that was where he hid his immortality. The light that hit me when Mom disappeared, well, maybe that was another aspect of his power. We never got beyond the door. Why would there be a door with nothing behind it?”

“So we go back to the city where your Mom disappeared and we find out,” suggested Calvin. “Then we try and find out where he hid the rest.”

Nikko nodded. His eyes fell to his father’s face once more.

“You can do nothing here, Nikko,” murmured Vincent, a hand coming to rest on Nikko’s shoulder. “But if we find the city first…”

Nikko shook his head. “The city collapsed,” he said, not looking round. “It’s buried under tons of rubble now.”

“Luckily,” smiled Vincent, “I know a guy…”


	34. “Her name is Juliet…”

The jet had seemed empty without Maggie or his father. It had been agreed that Maggie should stay behind, both to watch over Solomon and to work on what had been found in the Eratosthenes manuscript. It had only been partially translated, but hadn’t taken long for Calvin and Juliet to work through. Compared to Nabatean, Greek was a walk in the park! Between photographs of the original and a live feed from the jet to Maggie’s lab, the team had spent a busy few hours comparing the contents to the various versions of the legend now in their possession. All the while, Nikko sat, staring blankly ahead of him, rolling his coin around his fingers and saying nothing. Slowly, his eyes drifted closed.

The steps lay before him, just as he remembered them. There was Mikhail, reaching out to him: to his younger self. There was the light filled chamber. There was his younger body, reaching out to where his mother should have been. There were the snaking tendrils of light, reaching out to him, wrapping themselves around his small arm like ivy around a tree. He walked on. Before him lay the strange heliocentric system that had fascinated his mother so much, the massive symbol of the sun with its eight rays reaching out across the door.

“It’s not here,” said a gentle voice behind him.

Nikko turned, already knowing what he would see. Of all the things he had made a point of remembering about her, his mother’s voice was top of the list. “What’s not here, Mom?”

Haley smiled at her son, now a grown man. Once, she had had to crouch to speak to him at eye level, now it was he who looked down slightly to her. “You’re so like your father,” she smiled.

“What isn’t here, Mom?” Nikko repeated. “I need to know.”

“What you seek,” Haley answered with a shrug. “The knowledge you seek. The power you seek. The truth. It’s not here any more.”

“Then where is it?” Nikko pushed, though part of him screamed the answer. “Was it destroyed when the temple collapsed?”

“No,” laughed Haley. She raised a hand and placed it over Nikko’s heart. It was warm. Solid. Real. “You know where it is. It’s in here.” She tapped his chest. “It’s in you.”

“Then what’s behind the door?” Nikko continued, not daring to touch his mother’s hand lest it crumble to dust before his eyes. “The solar system: it’s on a door. Why have a door if there’s nothing behind it?”

“I didn’t say there was nothing,” chided Haley, moving her hand to her son’s face. She sighed. “You’re so like him. I’ve missed you both so much.”

When Nikko spoke, he could hear in his voice the childish tremor he thought he had laid to rest so many years ago. “Mom, Dad’s sick. He got hurt. Really hurt. Mom, if he… if he dies, will he be here? Will he be with you?”

A frown wrinkled Haley’s forehead. She shook her head, dropping her eyes away from her son’s. Her hand fell away. She stepped back. “He won’t come here,” she murmured. “Not if he’s dead. This is not a place for the dead.”

Haley stepped back again and, before Nikko could say a word, she was gone. He searched the blinding light filling the room for the slightest sign of her, but all he could see was Mikhail reaching out to his younger self. Turning back to the door, and the glowing sun symbol, Nikko scanned the surrounding walls. The glyphs were there, just as he remembered. They were familiar, but still he could not place them. He searched further, ducking under the sinuous beam of light to reach the other side of the door. Then he saw it: the symbol he had first seen in Paris, and in his mother’s journal.

Nikko woke up. “She’s not dead!”

The quiet conversation on the other side of the jet stopped. Vincent, now seated opposite Nikko, studied him with narrowed eyes. Calvin and Juliet exchanged wary glances and turned to him.

“Who, Nikko?” Vincent asked, his voice soft and steady as always: as if he had all the answers and everything was just a test to see if you could keep up. “Who is not dead?”

Nikko sat up and shook his head as if to dislodge something. What? The memory? The dream? The truth? “I was dreaming,” he admitted, eventually. From the corner of his eye he saw Calvin and Juliet leave their seats and edge closer. “It wasn’t like a normal dream though. It felt real. Like a memory. But it couldn’t be a memory, because I could see myself. It was like I was outside of myself, watching it all happen. I saw the temple door. I saw the light, the symbols, the glyphs. I saw Mom. She spoke to me.”

“What did she say?” Vincent queried smoothly, as if Nikko had just mentioned meeting someone on a trip to the supermarket.

“She said it wasn’t there, what we were looking for,” answered Nikko, watching his mentor as closely as he was being watched by him. “Knowledge, power, truth: it’s all gone. It’s all… she said it’s all in me now.”

“Then Calvin was right,” began Vincent, stopping when Nikko raised a hand.

“No,” he said. “There’s still something there, behind the door. She told me that much. She just didn’t say what.”

“Can I ask a really stupid question,” mused Calvin, looking from Nikko to Vincent.

“Never stopped you before,” grinned Nikko.

Cal bit back a sharp retort. The tone was right, the grin was right, but it didn’t quite reach Nikko’s eyes. Instead he looked back at Vincent. “Are we sure the temple where Haley vanished leads to the Sacred City?”

“Solomon excavated there the years after Haley disappeared,” replied Vincent. “He had a team strip the place down to the bedrock, at least as much as they could. The roof of the chamber where the event occurred was too large to move. They never got in there.”

Nikko sat up. “Are you saying my Mom could still be down there?”

“No,” Vincent replied, shaking his head. “They could not get a person down there, but even then technology was advanced enough to get a fibreoptic camera through the rubble. The chamber was empty. The door was blocked, but the carvings on it and around it were, at least mostly, intact.”

“Then why are we going, if we can’t get in?” Juliet frowned.

“Solomon used every trick he could try to remove the rubble, and there were many, but he was unwilling to use the one thing that might have made the difference,” shrugged Vincent. “He had no idea then of any possibility of the powers you possess, Nikko, but he did hypothesise that there may have been some sort of connection formed between you and the sphere, through the light that hit you. He was, however, unwilling to take you back to the place that had caused you so much trauma.”

“Wait a minute,” said Nikko, holding up his hands. “The biggest thing I’ve moved is a drinks table. You want me to shift how many tons of solid rock now?”

“You will never know unless you try,” shrugged Vincent. “As for the temple leading to or being a part of the Sacred City, I don’t know. Solomon always thought it was a key location in Haley’s research, even that it might be an entrance to the city itself, but unable to get to the chamber he turned back to finding another clue, another way in. I am no expert and only know this second hand, from many discussions with your father, Nikko; however, whatever it may be, it was an important site for Haley. Perhaps it is the Sacred City, or where the star fell, or simply another stopping point along the way: we will know more when we get there.”

“My money’s on the landing site of the ‘star’,” muttered Calvin. “That seemed to be what the Nabatean parchment was saying.”

“How goes your progress with the Eratosthenes manuscript?” Vincent enquired, turning to Cal and Juliet.

“For the most part, it’s done,” replied Juliet. “We’re just translating the place names now. Maggie’s trying to overlay his map on a modern one.”

“Map? What map?” Nikko blinked, the shiver of a frown passing over his face. “We have a map?”

Juliet nodded. “That’s what makes the Eratosthenes manuscript so unique: it has a map in it. It looks like the document is a part of the lost Geographika. The first ever textbook on geography. We know of some parts of it from other writings by people like Strabo and Pliny, and we have a copy of his first map of the world, but so much was lost!”

“Wait, if we already have his first map, what’s different with this one?” Nikko asked, rising and heading for the desk.

“Eratosthenes first map showed all of the known world, with basic lines of longitude and latitude,” began Calvin.

“This map shows all of that, but in place on a map of the whole planet,” continued Juliet. “Eratosthenes worked out the diameter of the Earth, remember. He knew that, and he knew how far it was from, say, Alexandria to Cyrene. He used the latter to calculate the former. That also meant, however, that he could work out the scale. The first map is very rough around the areas he had never visited or was not sufficiently familiar with personally. This one is more accurate. It also includes something else. It contains places, plotted on the map, that Eratosthenes could not possibly have known about. Places that are plotted in areas as yet unexplored by the known peoples of that world!”

Nikko looked from Juliet to Cal to the printed copy of the map. Sure enough, out in the blank, uncharted areas were labels. Labels written in something that definitely wasn’t Greek. He said as much to Juliet.

“It’s hieratic,” she replied. “Not much of a problem on its own but this is also in some type of code.”

“Remind me again how exactly you found this thing?”

_ 9 days after the fall _

_Calvin rubbed at wrists red raw with the imprint of ropes. His feet were still tied and his body bound to the chair he now found himself in, but they needed his hands free if they wanted him to get anywhere with the task before him. Instead, two guards loomed over him, which was absolutely not distracting at all! He racked his brain, flicking through files and folders as he went, determined to look busy even if he was getting nowhere fast. The laptop itself had been easy enough to hack: he and Ibrahim had seen breaking into each other’s work stations as entry level practical jokes. Even the desktop background was the one he had last loaded up before Ibrahim left the group. It was the same shot of them both at Guatemala, but with a speech bubble added from Ibrahim’s mouth, declaring Cal “the greatest scientist who ever lived” and other such compliments. That had made Cal smile, albeit briefly. The joke, of course, was not in the words, but in the speaker and he knew Ibrahim knew that. Had known that._

_He had started his search with the obvious, systematically working his way through the neatly arranged folders and their files. Then he’d moved on to that which was only obvious to him: the places he had known Ibrahim to hide things, on either of their computers. He had flicked through photos, recalling the time Ibrahim had locked the keys to Calvin’s apartment in the laboratory safe, changed the code and left clues to it scattered among photographs of their latest project. Nothing. He could see nothing. No clues whatsoever to help him locate the manuscript, and his captors were starting to get impatient. It didn’t help that he didn’t even know what the manuscript looked like._

_A trawl through the depths of the computer’s filing system was interrupted by the sound of doors opening and carefully closing again. He didn’t bother looking round. Only Righetti was that exact in the closing of a door. The neat, expensively clad footsteps, tip-tapping like the hooves of a satyr, stepped steadily towards him. The equally expensive suit stepped into view. Calvin looked up._

_“What progress, Doctor Banks?” Righetti enquired, as evenly as if he had been speaking to a lab assistant working through a series of analytical tests._

_“Well, I think I’ve identified a few hundred places where it isn’t,” quipped Cal, leaning back in his chair._

_“Really,” murmured Righetti, dryly. “If I didn’t know any better, Doctor Banks, I might think you were trying to stall. All the hours you have been searching that computer and still not even the slightest idea where your so-called friend might have hidden the manuscript. Either you are not as intelligent as my information suggests, were not as close to your friend as my information suggests, or have some misguided belief that, if you drag this out long enough, your other friend will save you. As I know my information to be accurate, I can only assume the latter. That, Doctor Banks, I feel I must now disprove. Your colleague did well in tracking you, I will admit. Better than I expected her to. However, she did make the mistake of trying to sneak into this building on her own, without any form of back-up.”_

_Righetti turned and nodded to someone in the direction of the door. Calvin heard the door open and heavy footsteps enter. A wave of nausea crept over him as the limp figure was placed in the chair opposite him. She was here. She was alive: she had to be. That was the one thing he was sure of even before the guards started tying her hands and feet in place._

_“Unconscious, merely, Doctor Banks, but I can assure you I personally will make her wish she had stayed that way when she awakes if you do not find me that manuscript. We have cleared your friend’s home and workplace of all that may contain the item or clues to its location. We have searched both places thoroughly. Everything has been moved here. It surrounds you as you see. All you need do is instruct myself or my men on where and how to look when you decide to find something.”_

_“There is nothing here,” Calvin enunciated carefully, glaring at Righetti. “Hurting her will achieve nothing! I can’t find what isn’t here!”_

_“Wrong on two counts, Doctor Banks,” sighed Righetti. “Firstly: either the manuscript or a clue to its whereabouts are most definitely here. They can be no place else: everything is here. Secondly, whether you are ultimately able to aid us in our search or not, I personally will find much entertainment in the interesting and detailed ways in which we can hurt your beautiful colleague here.”_

_“Her name is Juliet,” growled Calvin, “and if you hurt her, I swear I will end you.”_

_Righetti laughed. “Ah, the same old story! Doctor Banks: you are in no position to be making threats! One word from me and my men will make sure you can’t even end a sentence! Besides: her name means nothing to me! Why would it? She is a toy: a pawn in a game that you are rapidly losing! I have no interest in her name! My only interest is in how many of her screams it takes for you to do what I want. Not too few, I hope.”_


	35. “You’re so like your father!”

_ 9 days after the fall _

_The first scream took just over an hour. The only reason he knew this was the clock on the computer screen before him. Righetti had ordered the removal of Juliet to a separate room. One close enough for him to hear the scream, without knowing the cause. Cal wondered whose imagination was better at thinking up reasons for that scream: his or Righetti’s. What he was imagining was bad enough, but if anyone was going to think up something worse, he was reasonably certain it would be Righetti._

_The computer had yielded no clues, but from his bound position, he could only direct the guards on how to search through the collected furniture and files that sat before him. He had tried explaining that the search would go faster if he could look himself, but Righetti had just laughed. Anything small enough the guards had brought to him, but for the larger items of furniture he had to make do with looking on as they followed his instructions and described what they saw. It had not escaped Cal that the furniture he and Juliet had searched in Ibrahim’s apartment was also in the group. How long had Dorna been watching them?_

_Another scream rang out. Cal didn’t bother to bite back the answering roar rage wrenched from him, or the curse that followed it. He could feel the ropes, now binding his wrists again, burning his skin as he twisted and turned, trying to free even just one hand. A low laugh echoed through the room from loudspeakers high on the walls. Righetti’s voice rolled around the room._

_“You wish to kill me, Doctor Banks?” Righetti chuckled. “Oh, I know you do. You think killing me will stop the screams. But you know the only thing that will stop the screaming. Find me the manuscript, Doctor Banks. Find it, and then the screaming will stop. This I promise you.”_

_Tears rolled down Cal’s cheeks, hot tears that cooled quickly and fled to oblivion in the dusty floor. It wasn’t here. It couldn’t be here. There was nowhere left to search. Nothing. Nothing that his mind would dredge from his memories of Ibrahim. Every time he searched the halls of memory, he found Juliet, not Ibrahim. Every sight was replaced by vision of her bruised and bleeding in a chair. Every sound echoed with the sound of her screams. It didn’t help that just when he thought he’d got past one such memory, reality presented him with a new, explicitly real, moment to replace it._

_Once again the soundtrack to his worst nightmare played through the loudspeakers. Once again the red mist descended. Only once his breath failed him did he hear the change. The screams were different. Shorter. Deeper. Punctuated by the sound of something heavy hitting flesh. He felt sick. Then it hit him. The screams were different._

_They weren’t Juliet’s._

****

“We’re coming in to land,” Vincent reported, interrupting Cal’s account. He cast wary eyes over the pair. Juliet was pale, but Cal was flushed. Whether it was the memory of frustration, or the ghost of unexorcised anger, it made Vincent wonder how many times the memory had played out in Cal’s mind at night, robbing him of any meaningful rest. That, at least was something he could understand, and it explained a lot.

The jet descended on the small runway. They were still some distance from the temple, but this was the nearest landing site. A jeep would be waiting to drive them most of the rest of the way, to the campsite Solomon had set up all those years ago. It was in the same spot as Haley’s had been: the nearest reasonably flat clearing to the temple. Although Vincent had heard much of the place, both from Solomon and de Molay, he had never been there in person. In fact, the only person on the jet who had visited the place before was Nikko.

Nikko sat beside Vincent through the drive to the site. Cal and Juliet continued their work on the Eratosthenes map in the back, their murmured discussion a constant background to the intermittent jolts and thuds of the road. It was as well that Vincent hadn’t needed a navigator: the usually smart-mouthed, vociferous younger Zond had settled into pensive silence. Even the arrival at the campsite, the halting of the vehicle, and the sight of gear being unloaded again in the place he had last visited with his mother, failed to draw a comment from him. Vincent watched his charge wander to the soot blackened space at the centre of the site and look from its inky shadows to the cobalt sky above. The sun was sinking. Whatever internal issues Nikko was dealing with, they would have to leave now if they were to get to the temple before nightfall, or leave the last leg of their journey to another day. If Dorna were also on the trail of the city, and he was sure they were, time was not a luxury they had to spare.

“Nikko,” said Vincent, his hand landing on the younger man’s shoulder like an anchor to this world. “Come on: we have to go.”

A walk through a rainforest is made so much easier when one person in the group can clear the route with just his mind. The cobalt blue of the sky had darkened by the time they arrived at the temple, but not by half as much as Vincent had feared. Solomon’s expedition notes had given clear instructions on the safest route into what remained of the structure, but when Nikko led them down a different route, Vincent didn’t argue. With flashlights shining, they followed where he led, stepping cautiously where he trod until they could go no further. A slab of rock, larger than any of the tumbled stones of the edifice so far, lay slanted down towards them. This was it: the stone his father had been unable, with all his resources and knowledge, to move.

In the back of his mind, Nikko registered the cessation of footsteps behind him. Every other part of his brain was focussed on the rock before him. Beyond that rock lay the chamber where his mother had disappeared. Beyond that rock lay the answers, he believed, to so many questions. He didn’t dare give voice to the tiny spark of hope, ignited by his dream, of what else lay beyond there. He closed his eyes.

Focus.

He breathed: in, out, just as Vincent had taught him.

Focus.

His teacher’s voice echoed through his mind. There was no way he could hear the word in his head and not hear it in Vincent’s voice now.

Focus.

Nikko saw the great slab of rock in his mind.

Focus.

He imagined it rising: returning to its previous position. He saw the smaller stones untumble themselves from around his feet, shoring up the slab on columns that showed only the faintest cracks in their smooth sides.

Focus.

He heard the grinding of ancient masonry returning itself to its proper position, the murmured amazement of his companions. He heard his mind become their reality.

Focus.

Nikko opened his eyes.

The sight before him swept him back a dozen years. It was there: the temple. Not just the chamber, but the whole building. It was as if time had moved backwards. Maybe it had. He had little enough idea of the limits of his new abilities. Nikko looked up, searching the ceiling for any signs of collapse. He could see none. Still, he didn’t dare look away from the chamber. Instead he changed his focus to the familiar solar system built into the door on the far side of the room.

“Stay here,” Nikko ordered, stepping forward into the room.

“I’m coming with you,” stated Vincent, as simply as if he had said the sky was blue.

“I have to do this alone,” Nikko argued, still not looking round. “I’m the only one who can.”

“I can’t lose you here, Nikko,” countered Vincent. “The last person to touch that sun was never seen again.”

A flame of anger flickered in Nikko’s voice. “I know that. I also know the only person to have stood in this chamber while it flared and survived is me. I can’t lose anyone else to it. Whatever happens to me in there, you stay here. I don’t know what will happen to the temple if I vanish. I might be the only thing keeping the ceiling up. I need you to get Cal and Juliet out of here if that happens.”

Behind him, Nikko heard Vincent sigh. “You’re so like your father!”

A smile curled Nikko’s lip. He stepped forward into the room. No footsteps followed him. Another few strides and the door was before him. A heliocentric solar system, earlier in origin than any other depiction on the planet. At least, anything they had found. His hand floated up to the sun almost without his knowledge or consent. He stopped it. A glow had blossomed in the protruding hemisphere: a familiar glow. His mother had placed her hand upon the sun and had vanished. Why? Because she was not him? Or had she made a mistake? She thought this place was an entrance to the sacred city. What did he think? Nikko stilled, running his mind back over all the clues. All the versions of the story echoed through his mind, the voices of their tellers mingling into one asynchronous chorus. He searched the symbols on the door, only half certain what he was looking for. His eyes flitted over the mostly concentric orbits: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, asteroids, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, something else. Before the display broke into the irregular depths of the Oort cloud, partly sharing its orbit with other, smaller, rocky objects, was a tenth planet. Pluto was hard enough to spot from here, but this system showed ten planets, not nine or eight. Nikko frowned, his hand moving to hover over the unknown planet. Was this where the ‘lonely god’ had come from, like some errant David Bowie character? Or was it simply the case that the people who built this doorway knew more of what existed out there than modern humans? No light hummed into life below his fingertips here. He continued his search of the door, scanning each orbit in turn, then remembered the glyphs at the side. Dragging his eyes away from the solar system, Nikko cast them over the carvings around it, first one side, then the other. Some were glyphs he recognised. Others were new to him, yet somehow familiar. One in particular caught his attention. It was a man with a bow. Sagittarius.

Nikko’s hand dropped to the carving, following the line of the drawn bow to the nock of the arrow, then up along the line of the arrow and onward, following its trajectory. It was not the tenth planet that the arrow pointed to. Neither was it the sun. In fact the arrow did not line up with anywhere on the door. Nikko followed the line over and across to the far side of the door, to a glyph that he felt he should remember but could not. It was worn by time, but the shadows of his flashlight threw what features remained into stark relief. Within the bounds of a raised ring, there was the image of a five pointed star.

Sagittarius, the archer, had once shot down a star.

Nikko reached up to the star and let his hand fall upon it. The world went white.


	36. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

When the light slowly faded, or perhaps when his eyes finally got used to it, Nikko looked around him. Wherever he was, it certainly was not in the dark, barely held together depths of a ruined temple in the midst of a South American rainforest. There was a floor below his feet – he could feel it – but he could see no walls, no floor, no ceiling: only luminous white light. Four figures hung in that light, so still they might be dead, yet their skin glowed faintly with the promise of life. Nikko looked from one face to another, picking out the tiny details that identified each individual. He knew them all. Well, he knew one. He recognised the other three.

“Mom?” Nikko fought the trembling hoarse voice that escaped when he reached the fourth figure. It was his mother, as healthy as the day he had last seen her, if perhaps a little older. Not much though. Not as much as she should be. But then, the other three couldn’t be as young as they appeared either. Not if what he knew about them was true. A faint noise called his attention back to the well-loved face before him. “Mom?”

Haley stirred, her eyes opening as if from peaceful slumber. She looked down upon the young man watching her with bated breath. She frowned, studying his features. “Nikko?” Her hand drifted up to her son’s face. “I dreamed of you like this…”

“I don’t think that was a dream, Mom,” Nikko told her, raising his arms to help his mother descend the invisible step to his level. Instantly, Haley’s legs buckled under her. Nikko’s arms tightened around her, lifting her back to her feet.

“How long has it been?” Haley gasped, shifting her grip to around her son’s shoulders.

“Too long, Mom,” murmured Nikko, “too long.”

“He said it would be longer than it seemed,” sighed Haley, persuading her feet to take a few tentative steps forward.

Nikko frowned. “Who did, Mom? Who said that?”

“The man,” Haley frowned. “The fourth man. The one who gave me his space.”

“A man like these guys?” Nikko asked, pointing up at the three silent figures they were now passing.

Haley looked up and nodded, a smile flickering over her face. “Yes. You know who they are?”

“Yeah, your friend looked me up in New York two years ago,” scoffed her son. “He could have mentioned you!”

“They’re guardians,” Haley smiled, looking over her son again. “They guard the doorways. The man you met: he guarded the door where I disappeared. When I touched the sun carving and it brought me here, it woke him up. He was confused at first. He said it should have killed me. But here I was, so he said I must be here for a reason. I asked him, begged him, to send me back. I told him about you. About how I had a husband and a son out there, waiting for me, or mourning for me. But he said that wasn’t my path now. He promised me he would watch over you. Seemed to think you were important. He insisted I was here for a reason. Put me into stasis where you found me. Promised you would find me, if he was right about you. But he wouldn’t say more. Only that it wouldn’t seem so long this way.”

“I don’t suppose he told you how to get out of here?” Nikko wondered aloud, searching the blank light for some sign of an exit. “Or even where ‘here’ is, for that matter?”

Haley shook her head. “He just said that was the wrong question, or something like that…”

“That’s not the question?” Nikko supplied, shoulders dropping in resignation.

“Yeah, that was it,” Haley nodded, looking round. “You’ve definitely met him then!”

“Yeah, Dad was after a crystal skull that had showed up at auction and this guy turned up. I thought he was nuts at first, but then…”

“Turned out not so much?”

“Yeah,” Nikko nodded. “So he put you into stasis somehow, then he left.”

“I was already out by that point,” added Haley. “I have no idea how he got out.”

“No, but at least we know there’s a way,” shrugged her son. “Plus, I got here a different way from you. Maybe we can use that. Either way, if he got out, so can we.”

“I guess so,” his mother agreed. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Nikko blinked, his eyes turning to focus on something entirely internal. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Maybe you’re right.”

****

_ 9 days after the fall _

_Calvin knew he was not the only one to spot the difference in the screams. His guards, who had been lounging against the furniture around him, were suddenly alert, like dogs hearing the rattle of the door at dinner time. Their eyes were fixed on the door Righetti had vanished through. Their hands were on their guns. Whoever the next person through that door was, Calvin thought, they had better be one hell of a shot._

_He forgot who he was dealing with. The guards didn’t even have time to turn round._

_“Vincent!” Cal called, spotting the familiar figure at the far door. “Over here!”_

_Vincent waited until he was by Cal’s side to ask how he was._

_“I’m fine,” he replied, rubbing the red rings around his wrists where the ropes had been. “They needed me. They have Juliet, though…”_

_“Not any more,” smirked Vincent, confirming his comrade’s hopes. The smirk turned into a smile when he saw Calvin’s body relax in relief. “She is safe, Calvin.”_

_“I heard her scream…”_

_The older man’s features darkened. “So did I. I assure you, her assailant found her injuries revisited on him with interest. He will not be hurting anyone else.”_

_“Righetti’s dead?” Cal queried._

_“I am afraid I neglected to pause for introductions,” Vincent growled. “If you mean the worm in the suit, however: no. He managed to wriggle away while we dealt with his underlings. It appears he prefers not to sully his own hands with such work.”_

_“We? Professor Zond?”_

_Vincent shook his head. “Maggie and Solomon are still in Jerusalem. We did not think it wise to leave the dig unsupervised. No, my companion on this mission is not one I expected to stand beside in such circumstances. Nevertheless: he fought well enough and did not get in my way. He is with Juliet now.”_

_“Nikko?” Cal frowned, now utterly confused._

_Vincent shook his head. “A Mister Anthony Blake. The man Juliet has been seeing since last Christmas.”_

_Cal felt his heart sink like a millstone. “Wait, what’s he doing here? How did he even know where we were?”_

_“He claims he has a friend who owed him a favour and, as he had been expecting Juliet home some time ago and could not get any response from his attempts to contact her, decided to use said favour to track her down himself. He arrived at the dig site as I was preparing to leave and insisted he accompany me.”_

_“And that doesn’t strike you as odd?” Cal frowned._

_Vincent looked at Cal and smiled. It was a smile he’d seen before. Too often!_

_“Of course it did,” Calvin sighed. “Okay, let’s get out of here. Where are they?”_

_Barely an hour later, after a brief stop to pay their hotel bills, and a bit extra to cover the damage, Calvin found himself sitting in the familiar surroundings of the foundation’s jet, Vincent opposite him studying a chessboard. His eyes kept straying to the couple sitting further up the plane, and every time he dragged them back to the board. Juliet was with Anthony. She was happy with Anthony. He had come looking for her when she was in danger. He had found her, rescued her even!_

_And he had made Vincent suspicious of him._

_Maybe it was Vincent’s job to be suspicious of people, but if nothing else it would mean a substantial background check. Vincent had friends that owed him favours too._

****

Darkness descended like a light switch had been flicked off somewhere. Perhaps it had. A switch of some kind, anyway. In the gloom, Nikko relied on his other senses while his eyes caught up. He could feel the cold stone under his hand, the raised lines of the star familiar and exactly where they had been before. It was as though his body had remained in the ruins, frozen, while his mind travelled to wherever he had been. Perhaps it had. Whatever had happened, he was certain of one thing: his mother had returned with him. She still leant on him, but she was there, and she was alive, and they were back. The scent of mouldering stone and rotting vegetation was just as he remembered it, though the temperature had dropped somewhat.

The shadowy world around them faded back into focus. Nikko turned, glancing up at the barely stable ceiling. Wherever he had gone, the structure around them had stayed up at least. How long would it hold, though?

“Come on, Mom: let’s get out of here,” Nikko muttered, steering them both towards the exit.

To say the others were surprised at Nikko’s, and more especially Haley’s, return would be to miss a perfect opportunity to use the word flabbergasted, though astounded or astonished would work too. None of them had met Haley before her disappearance, but they all knew her well enough from her photos and artefacts, and the numerous stories that Nikko, Solomon, and most often Maggie had told of her. Night had fallen fully while Nikko had been in the temple, so after some hurried introductions, Vincent led them back to camp.

“Do we stay here tonight or head back to the jet?” Calvin asked, one arm around Haley, supporting her on her other side.

“Doctor Cayce needs food and water, which we have here,” said Juliet, “but she also needs rest and I need to check her over properly. That would be better done in the jet. We can sleep there tonight just as easily as here and with less work.”

“We can also get airborne, head home,” murmured Vincent. “I instructed our pilot to rest while she could and be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. We can sleep while she flies. Besides, Doctor Cayce is not the only person who needs to be checked over.”

“Me?” Nikko frowned, opening the door of the jeep and helping his mother into it. “I’m fine.”

“We still need to discuss what just happened,” replied Vincent, seating himself behind the wheel. “A jet is more secure than a jungle.”

“We need to discuss a lot more than that,” interjected Haley, turning to study Vincent’s face. “Starting with who you three are, and I mean more than just names, and where my husband is!”

“Dad’s back in New York, with Maggie,” supplied Nikko, who had spent the walk back to camp relaying the reasons that had brought them back to the ruined temple without once explaining whom he meant by “we”.

“Maggie? My Maggie?” Haley’s face brightened. “She’s still on the team?”

“She’s our biochemical analyst,” smiled Nikko in return. “She’s the only person who gets to tell Dad off for, like, anything!”

“Not the only person,” smirked Vincent. “I just don’t get to tell him off in front of all of you.”

“How is Solomon?” Haley asked, watching them both carefully.

Nikko winced. “He took a knock to the head. That’s why he’s not here, and why Maggie stayed with him. It’s a long story.”

“It’s a long drive,” shrugged Vincent, steering the jeep back through the darkened rainforest with considerably more care than he had on the route out. “Well, long enough for that, anyway, and secure enough.”

Nikko nodded at the truth of this, cast a glance over at Cal and Juliet, already dozing side by side, and turned back to his mother. “Okay, so before Cal, Juliet was dating this really shady guy…”


	37. “Thank you... for looking after my boys.”

The jet touched down, jolting Cal awake. It had been a while since the team had flown so many flights or worked so many hours in such a short space of time. Even his jet lag had jet lag! It would be nice to say he had slept the whole journey, but he hadn’t. Those golden moments of slumber had been shattered by fanfares of remembered screams. Screams that had been echoing inside his skull every spare moment since Juliet had been kidnapped. Mostly they had been hers, dragged all the way across an ocean and half a year by the irrefutable logic of whatever had happened once could happen again. On rare occasions, oh those wonderful, elusive occasions, they would be Tony’s. Vincent would not approve, he was sure. Well, who knew: maybe he would. He never was sure where Vincent stood on vengeance, but he was absolutely certain what he thought about justice.

He sat up, nudging Juliet upright. “Hey, we’re here. Wake up.”

“Say what?” Juliet muttered, rubbing her eyes. “Already?”

“Yep,” replied Cal, grabbing his bag. “Hey, I’m gonna go help unload. You okay clearing up here?”

Juliet squinted at the messy table before her. Only half the mess was hers, technically, but it was all the same set of papers. “You figure out anything else?”

Cal shook his head. “Nothing that made any sense. Not at whatever hour my brain seems to think it is right now, anyway!”

“We’ll have more space to lay things out at the foundation,” Juliet shrugged, gathering the papers into a pile.

Cal nodded and ducked out of the now open doorway, following Vincent.

“Looks like you’re the new me,” said a soft voice from above.

Juliet looked up to see Haley looking down at her. “Oh! Doctor Zond! I mean Mrs Cayce! I mean…”

“Hayley is fine, Juliet,” laughed the older woman holding up a hand. “Or do you prefer Doctor Droil at work?”

“If I did, in this job, I’d never be Juliet!” Juliet laughed. “I’m sorry: you said I’m the new you? How so: did you get left with clearing up too or did you also study ancient languages?”

“Actually, yes to both of those, now I think of it,” smiled Haley. “And if it wasn’t Solomon dashing off in a hurry, it was Nikko, although he seems better trained now.”

“Everyone has their jobs when we land,” smiled Juliet, slotting the papers into a plastic folder. “I’m the team medic, so my responsibility is checking everyone is okay when we land and everyone bar the pilot is off the plane.”

“Ah, that was definitely not my job: we couldn’t afford a private jet back then, for starters! Apparently, my son’s job is driving us home?”

“Not if Vincent has anything to do with it,” replied Juliet, pulling a face. “Or, well, anyone really!”

“Is he really that bad?” Haley asked, brows drawing together in the merest twitch of a frown.

“Oh, no, not by ordinary person standards, or even ordinary driving standards, it’s just that everyone has to have an advanced permit before Professor Zond will let any of us drive on anything vaguely work related and Vincent only gives up the wheel to him or, if she calls it, Maggie.” Juliet stood up, folder under one arm, bag over her shoulder. “Sorry: you never said how I was the new you?”

“Oh that,” Haley laughed. “Oh, I was just thinking how, not too long ago – for me at least – that would have been me asleep on Solomon’s shoulder, with Maggie somewhere around, especially in the early years. It’s strange to come back and see how far the world has moved on, and that the Veritas foundation has a new trio of young faces waiting in the wings to make sure its work goes on. Strange, but good.”

Haley smiled again and patted Juliet’s arm, then followed the others out of the plane to where her son and Cal were carefully loading unused gear into the vehicle waiting with Vincent behind the wheel. She pulled herself up beside him.

“Do they still call shotgun these days, or do I have to fight my son for this seat too?”

Vincent grinned. “I suggested he try moving me with his mind, but apparently he either thought I was joking or his abilities have not progressed quite as much as he might like.”

“You seem very comfortable with his ‘abilities’,” said Haley, studying Vincent’s imperturbable features. “And you are apparently one of very few people I know who could ever tell my husband off for anything! Thank you, by the way, for looking after my boys.”

“It is what I am paid to do,” shrugged Vincent, “but I will admit they do not always make it easy.”

“You seem familiar to me,” frowned Haley, “but I know you didn’t work for the foundation before the accident.”

“I worked for our enemies before I worked for our benefactor,” admitted Vincent. “The team and our benefactor know this, though only our benefactor knows the reasons for my change of sides. I believe I had the job of tailing you once or twice.”

Haley looked thoughtful, but before she could say more the rest of the team piled into the car and they were on the move again.

****

They had headed for the hospital first. It hadn’t exactly been a demand of Haley’s to be taken directly to her husband and friend, but when she had stated it as their destination no one, not even Vincent, would have dared argue even if they wanted to. Nikko had led the way, almost dragging his mother through the snow-white corridors to his father’s floor. It was only when they reached the door of the ward that he hesitated.

“Perhaps I should go first,” offered Vincent, pushing the door open as he spoke.

Juliet and Calvin followed Vincent through, leaving Nikko and his mother to last, Haley wrapped her arm round her son and looked at him quizzically.

“It’s just…” Nikko faltered. For all his years he felt like that little lost boy once more, wondering if life would ever feel normal again. “I can’t remember what it feels like to have you both here. What if, now that I’ve got you back…”

Haley smiled softly at her son. “It’s not some magic seesaw, Nicholas. I went away for a while. Now I’m back. The fact that your father is ill at the same time has nothing to do with it.”

“I know… I mean: logically, I know that,” stammered Nikko. “It’s just… This thing that we’re wrapped up in? This quest? Search for truth? Whatever? I’ve seen so many weird things happen that I don’t know what’s linked and what isn’t! I’m some kind of what? Demi-god? Chosen one? Alien? What if I’m not supposed to have two parents around to help me? What if I can only have one of you at a time?”

Haley sighed. “I know I don’t know anywhere near to everything you’ve been through in the last twelve years, Nikko, but I do know this: you can either stay stuck here with me forever, wondering, or you can walk through those doors with me and find out.”

Nikko nodded, tentatively at first, but then with growing determination. Everything else this life had thrown at him, in the past two years anyway, he had faced. He could face this too. He just didn’t want to.

With a final nod, he took Haley’s hand and led her through the hospital ward doors. At the end of the corridor lay his father’s private room. He could see Juliet and Cal waiting outside, their expressions giving nothing away. They reached the door. It was never clear how much Vincent had told Maggie, but the expression on her face clearly said if he had told her about Haley, she hadn’t believed him. Nikko left the two women hugging and crying and walked to his father’s side. He still lay there, unconscious, just as he had left him. Perhaps there was a little less colour in his cheeks, perhaps it was just Nikko’s own worry making him see the flaws. He had never seen Solomon look so gaunt. Not even when his father had gone days without food or sleep searching for his mother in the weeks after she had disappeared. He reached a hand out to the bandage around his head. He had power, didn’t he? He had used it to find his mother, couldn’t he use it to heal his father? But what if he made things worse? He didn’t know what he was doing. He couldn’t control it. Not yet. Nikko felt a pair of warm arms encircle him.

“He’s no worse,” his mother whispered in his ear. “You see. Maggie says the doctors are thinking of reducing his sedation: wake him up and see what the damage is. That’s good news, Nicholas. Good news.”

A shuffling told him the others were filing into the room. Sniffing, Nikko wiped away the unheeded tears that were cooling on his cheeks. Behind him, he heard the door close.

“Now that we’re all here,” said Vincent, “we need to talk about our next move.”

“Have you got any further with the Eratosthenes manuscript?” Maggie asked, offering her chair to Haley.

Haley shook her head with a smile and stayed by her son and husband. “This is the manuscript you were studying on the plane?” She looked from Maggie to Calvin and Juliet, waiting for the nod of confirmation. “I’ve studied Eratosthenes’ works before: I’ve never seen anything like that. Where did you find it?”

Calvin gave a short, dry laugh. “Actually, we didn’t.” He nodded at the silent figure on the bed. “Professor Zond was the one who finally figured it out.”

****

_ 10 days after the fall _

_The flight back to Jerusalem had been heavy with an uneasy silence. Tony insisted on seeing to Juliet’s injuries himself, which left Cal and Vincent patching up each other’s minor injuries – at least the ones they couldn’t reach themselves. Cal spent the rest of the journey with Ibrahim’s notebooks, rescued from the purloined contents of his apartment, searching each one for clues, while Vincent was engrossed with something on his computer. Cal didn’t ask, but from the studiously neutral way Vincent interacted with their unexpected guest, he suspected it was a background check. Vincent’s expressions were guarded enough with people he liked._

_By the time they reached the Jerusalem dig site, Juliet was sufficiently rested that Blake could no longer monopolise her, though he never strayed far from her side. Understandable, perhaps, for someone who only knew her and had gone to such trouble to find her. Maggie did her best to engage Tony in conversation while Cal and Juliet talked Professor Zond through their extended absence. He wasn’t happy about the stretch they had decided to take on foot, but he conceded that they never would have found the Templar tunnels had they stuck to the roads as he had expected. He didn’t question the gaps they left in their accounts, or their decision to spend some time in the tunnels. His jaw did tense once or twice over their discovery of Ibrahim’s death and their search of his apartment. Too many had already lost their lives to this search for the truth. The Professor ran his hands over the notebooks and the photograph of Calvin and Ibrahim. Then Solomon chuckled._

_Cal looked up with a frown. “What?”_

_Solomon tapped the photo frame and looked up at Calvin. “He had it made to resemble the codex case.”_

_Calvin looked from Juliet to his mentor. “So?”_

_“So he had it made to resemble a case,” repeated Solomon, tapping the frame again. “What does a case do?”_

_“It… It opens,” murmured Cal. He looked up, eyes wide. “It opens! I assumed it only opened to fit the photograph in!”_

_“Did you check?” Solomon pushed, certain he had not._

_Calvin shook his head, lifting the frame in shaking hands. A warm hand touched his wrist, steadying him. He looked round to Juliet. She just smiled._

_There had been a trick to opening the codex case: a catch built in so the case didn’t open accidentally. It had been Ibrahim who had finally discovered it. Turning the frame over in his hands, Cal’s fingers sought the catch. There was the faintest of clicks and a line formed down the back of the frame. He drew the two halves apart as gently as if it had been the real thing. There was another click and the boxy ends of the frame popped up, hinging upwards at a touch. Cal tipped the frame upside down, letting the contents drop gently the few millimetres to the desk then removing the frame from them. They landed with the photograph face downwards on the hard surface. On top of it lay a scroll, partly unrolled so that the ends had curled neatly into the hollow box ends of the frame. The central part of the scroll, held flat for so long, stared up at them._

_“Is that what I think it is?” Juliet murmured._

_“It looks like the map Eratosthenes drew of the known world, but with more details,” replied Cal._

_Solomon reached out a gloved hand and gently rolled one side of the scroll open. “If Eratosthenes’ map only showed the known world,” he mused. “Why does this one have the Americas on it?”_


	38. "Plural?"

“This is amazing,” breathed Haley, looking down at the ancient map. “There is no way Eratosthenes could have known the Americas existed, or Antarctica. Not without help. These places he has marked: they look familiar. It’s a pity we can’t move the continents into their exact places…”

Cal looked at Juliet, then at Haley. “Actually, we might be able to do that. We have a computer program…”

“Really?” Haley cut in, looking up. “You can do that now? There are so many ancient maps that might help unlock!”

“It already has,” shrugged Juliet with a smile. “That was what we designed it for.”

Cal scanned and loaded up the map into the computer. “This part takes a while, so you might want to go catch up on other things,” he told them. “We’ll call you when we’ve got something.”

Nikko caught a glance from Maggie. “Yeah, c’mon Mom: Maggie and I have something to show you upstairs.”

Haley watched the pair suspiciously all the way up the ride in the elevator. They had persuaded her to leave Vincent with Solomon so that she and Maggie could catch up, and so that they could bring her up to speed with their current undertaking. Beyond the map, she had seen the parts of the Ring of Truth the team had found, and some of the boxes they found them in, several papers and parchments, and a sketch drawn by her son of the completed Ring. As far as she was aware, that was all they had.

The elevator doors hissed open and Haley followed them out and through the double doors straight ahead. Then she stopped, looking around her open mouthed. The room stretched out around her, far larger than those below. From one end to the other, it was filled with shelves and display cases, showing her life’s work. Everything she had ever worked on, it seemed, was here.

“Oh, Solomon,” she sighed.

“Come take a look at this, Haley,” called Maggie. “It was Nikko who spotted the similarities.”

She walked to the table the pair flanked and looked down. “My map!” Haley grinned in delight. “I remember making this.”

“Do you remember writing this?” Nikko asked, handing a folded piece of paper to his mother.

She unfolded the paper and looked down. “This is the Sagittarius legend: the one I told you as a child.” She looked up at her son. “I don’t remember teaching you to read this code though.”

“You didn’t. Dad was going to. He translated it though,” explained her son. “He said it was the whole story. Is it?”

Haley nodded. “As far as I recall, yes. Just as my mother told it to me.”

“Haley, the places in that story are the places on this map,” Maggie pointed out.

“That’s no surprise,” shrugged Haley. “I used the story as a guide in my research. These places came from there.”

“They also match closely with places we’ve visited for one reason or another in the past three years,” added Maggie.

Haley looked at the map again, her head on one side. “Closely, but not exactly?”

“Some were almost exact,” shrugged Nikko. “Some were out a bit, but not much. Nothing that we’ve visited has been remarkably distant.”

“That you’ve visited,” echoed Haley. “Okay. So, what ones haven’t you visited yet?”

“Quite a few,” admitted Maggie. “We’ve been trying to match up the places mentioned in the story with the items we’ve found to see if there is any pattern, but so far no such luck. As far as we can make out, each site could have one of the Ring’s circular units, a spacer, information, or something that confers some sort of impossible benefit on the finder, but there’s no way of knowing which until we get there.”

“The temple gave me some sort of power,” said Nikko, pointing out the tags as he spoke. “The pyramid in Antarctica healed Cal. The spring in Siberia saved me. We found parts of the Ring in Alaska, Tibet, southern France, Nova Scotia. There was a kid who could speak and write every language in history over in Russia, but we got him and his mom over here and safe. We found glyphs in the temple, Paris, Dashur, Antarctica, and now these scrolls in Damascus and that templar labyrinth in Syria. There’s a weird box we can’t open with glyphs on it too, from Wissembourg, but they’re Middle Egyptian and we can read them. We just can’t open the box. The box in the Alaskan pyramid led us to that.”

“Sounds complicated,” mused Haley, looking over the map with a keen eye. “I saw your sketch. Five discs and five spacers and you have what? Two of each?”

“Three spacers,” Nikko corrected. “We found one in Costa Rica the summer after I started college. We thought, maybe, there might be another piece in the temple, behind the door, or that it might lead us to the city. We even thought, maybe, it was where the star landed: the star that Sagittarius shot down.”

“I thought so too at first,” his mother nodded, “but it’s not that. It’s where he finally became human. He went through all sorts of trials, some say to prove himself to the gods, but at each trial he stripped a piece of his power.” She pointed at the pin in Siberia. “His immortality.” Antarctica. “His ability to heal, though some say that was passed on to his closest followers, leaving only the machine he used and what residual energy there was in it.” Egypt. “His knowledge of all things.” Russia “His knowledge of all tongues.”

“Could that have been passed on too?” Nikko asked.

“Or triggered in the boy you found, just as the psychokinesis has been in you,” suggested Maggie. “But if the ability to heal has been passed on, and we know to whom, doesn’t that mean…”

“I can’t heal Dad,” finished Nikko, frowning down at the map.

****

“Do you ever wonder what you’ll do when we find all this?” Juliet mused looking down at a map of her own.

“Look for the next thing,” replied Cal, watching the shifting copy of Eratosthenes’ map on the screen. “Why? What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” shrugged Juliet. “I never really thought about it until when we were getting off the plane. Haley said something that got me thinking.”

“What?” Cal looked round.

“She said I’m the new her,” replied Juliet, looking round to him. “I’m the new her and you’re the new Professor Zond. I think she thought maybe Nikko was the new Maggie too.”

“And you don’t wanna be?” Cal rose and joined her at the table.

“Doctor Cayce is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but her entire life was chasing down mysteries and bringing up Nikko. I don’t know if I want that for me.”

There was a pause and, when Cal spoke, his voice was quiet and careful. “The chase bit or the mom bit?”

Juliet looked round and studied his face. “The chase bit. At least… I don’t want that to be everything.”

“So, what _do_ you want to do?” Cal asked, still watching her.

“I want to teach,” she shrugged. “I want to share all this amazing knowledge with people. I want to inspire another generation to pick up from wherever we leave off, like Professor Zond inspired me.”

“Okay,” nodded Cal, placing his hand over hers, “So Doctor Cayce got it wrong. You’re not the new her, and I’m not the new Professor. It’s the other way around. Because I do want to focus on the chase. And I do want kids one day.”

“Kids, plural?” Juliet laughed. She caught the way he winced and raised her free hand to his cheek. “Let’s just hope they don’t turn out as much trouble as Nikko!”

Cal turned his head to kiss her palm. “You okay with that? You sure?”

Juliet smiled. “Yeah, I’m okay with that. Maybe not right now, but once things settle down a little.”

The computer dinged behind them. Cal turned and hurried over. “It’s done.”

Juliet caught the printout as the machine spat it out. She looked from it to the map she’d been working on and back again. “Will you call them, or shall I?”

“They’re still upstairs,” Cal pointed out. “Quicker just to go to them.”

The three were still gathered round the map table amongst Haley’s catalogue, but Nikko was lowering his phone. He looked up at the sound of the door.

“Dad’s waking up,” he reported, heading towards them. “We gotta go.”

“Just thirty seconds,” Juliet told him, hurrying past him to Haley. She showed her the printout of the rearranged map and pointed. “What’s this point? I have a more up to date map downstairs that I’ve been plotting our digs on like you have up here. This point isn’t on ours, but it is on yours, or something very close to it. What is it?”

Haley took the map, then looked from it to her own. “On my map, it’s the face of Viracocha at Ollantaytambo in Peru. This looks as though it’s a point just south of that. Why? What does this label mean?”

Juliet took the map back and glanced over at Cal, who nodded. “As far as we can make out,” she said, matching Haley’s steady gaze. “It means Sacred.”

Both Maggie and Haley’s eyes went wide. “You’ve found it!” Haley laughed. “After all this time, you’ve found it!”

“We’re not there yet,” warned Maggie. “Lots of things get called sacred.”

“But it’s the only label like that on the map, and too many of the other points match up with our map too,” pointed out Cal.

“Whatever it is,” said Haley, placing a hand on her friend’s shoulder, “it’s a lead. Come on: let’s go tell Solomon!”

****

Nikko was understandably first through the door of Solomon’s room, hurrying ahead of the more sedate pace set by the reunited best friends, and well ahead of the lovers, who dawdled, hand in hand, some distance behind.

“Dad!”

“Easy!” Vincent chided, as his pupil clattered into the room like a baby giraffe learning to run. “He’s conscious. Just resting.”

“Dad?” Nikko persisted, hastening to his father’s side and taking hold of his hand. “Dad, are you awake?” Nikko looked over his shoulder to Vincent. “Does he know?”

“Are you kidding me?” Vincent replied. “Some things have to be seen to be believed. Besides: this is your triumph to tell.”

“Nikko?” Solomon’s voice was as welcome as a cool breeze on a hot day, parched and weakened though it was.

“Dad!” Nikko yelped, all his attention flooding back to his father. “Dad, are you okay? Can you sit up? Do you want some water?”

“One at a time,” groaned Solomon, chuckling despite the way it made him wince. “Help me sit up, then we’ll see about the water.”

Obedient, for once, Nikko helped Solomon up, resettling the pillows behind him and handing the hospital bed controller to him. He poured a glass of water and passed it to his father, returning to his initial question as he did so.

“Apart from the worst headache of my life, I feel fine,” said Solomon. Then he froze staring past his son to the doorway. “I think I might be hallucinating a little bit though.”

Nikko didn’t need to look round to know what his father saw. “I found her, Dad. I found Mom. We all did.”

The glass of water shook in Solomon’s hands. He held it out to Vincent, never taking his eyes off the vision in the doorway. If he even blinked, he thought, she might disappear. He couldn’t lose her again. “Haley?”

“It’s me, Solomon,” smiled Haley. She stepped into the room and Vincent stepped out, closing the door behind him.

“Am I… Are you…” Solomon stammered, lost for words. Finally, he settled on a phrase. “Is this real?”

Haley sat on the bed by his other side, taking his hand and resting it over her heart. “It’s real, my love. It’s all real. I’m here. I’m alive. You’re alive. And our son… Solomon if you only knew what he can do!”

“You haven’t changed,” breathed Solomon, tracing his fingertips over his wife’s features. “How?”

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” replied Haley.

“Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future,” returned her husband. “So, you don’t know?”

“All I know is, it kept me alive until our son could find the means to free me,” smiled Haley.

“That’s not all, Dad!” Nikko added. “Cal and Juliet: they decrypted the map! We’ve found it, Dad! We found the city!”

“Wait, what now?” Solomon wrenched his eyes away from his wife to look at his son.

“We have, at least, found a very likely location,” corrected Haley prudently. She smiled at Nikko. “He is so like you, Solomon.”

“That hasn’t always been a good thing,” quipped Solomon, looking back to his wife.

“I can imagine!” Haley grinned back.

“You guys, I’m right here!” Nikko complained.

“When can I get out of here?” Solomon enquired, smiling at Haley.

“Nikko, would you go ask the doctor when we can take your father home, please?” Haley requested, smiling innocently at her son.

Nikko glared at them both. “Should I go grab a coffee too? Maybe take the team for lunch?”

“Just the doctor for now, I think,” breezed Solomon. “We’ll have plenty of time to get reacquainted when we get home.”

“And I’m out of here,” announced Nikko, rolling his eyes. “I will be back soon with the doctor. Please do not embarrass me!”

“What are parents for?” Solomon called after him as he left. Before the door swung shut, Nikko heard Solomon’s next question for his wife. “So, how do you feel about dating older men?”

His mother laughed, and it was a laugh he had longed to hear for so many years. “Why? Did you have one in mind?”

****

Juliet stepped out into the cool night air. Below them, Vincent and Nikko were hanging decorations and a welcome home banner with more than one meaning. There was a banquet of food on the way from their favourite restaurant, and Maggie was organising a collection of music that would help bring her friend up to speed with what she had missed, at least in that area. Technically, she and Cal should be helping, but he had asked her to meet him up on the roof first. The building itself was small compared to some of the skyscrapers in New York, but in their neighbourhood it was still tall enough to offer up a majestic view of the city at night. Cal was standing looking out at the city, waiting for her.

“I decided this would do for the party tonight,” she called out. “What do you think?”

“You are the most beautiful woman I ever have or ever will know,” Cal replied, before turning round.

“That’s sweet, but you didn’t even look at the dress,” she teased.

“I don’t need to look at what you’re wearing to know that you’re beautiful,” he murmured, meeting her halfway across the roof. “Come on: I want to show you something.”

Juliet let Cal lead her over to the edge of the roof, where the city lights sparkled and the view was unbroken. She looked up at him. “What are we doing here, Cal? Everyone will be waiting on us downstairs.”

“Let them wait,” he said, shifting uneasily. “I know you want more than this, but this is what I want, right here. I’m here for the long haul. That doesn’t mean you have to be. If you wanna teach, you should do that…”

“Cal?” Juliet frowned, but he held up a hand.

“Just let me finish, ‘cause I only plan on doing this once.” A little shakily, he dropped to one knee. “I can’t give you the world, but I can give you this.” He waved a hand at the view. When she looked back he had a ring in his hand. “And I can give you this, and with it, me.”

“Isn’t there supposed to be a question in there?” Juliet smiled. If he was only going to do this once, she was going to make him say the words.

Cal laughed nervously then looked up at her again. “Juliet Droil, will you marry me?”

Juliet watched him, smiling. This was a moment she wanted to remember forever.

“You’re making me nervous here,” Cal laughed. “Well? What do you think?”

“I think the way our lives have been going recently,” she laughed back, “we oughta elope!”

“Is that a yes?” Cal enquired. “Can I get up now?”

“Yes, it’s a yes!” Juliet laughed, dragging him to his feet and kissing him. “Of course it’s a yes!”

By the time they made it downstairs, ring ready to show off on her finger, the food had arrived and the small party was in full swing. That didn’t stop Vincent being the first to notice the addition and congratulate them. He certainly wasn’t the last.

~Fin~

** Acknowledgements: **

I would like to thank the wonderful people in my life and on Facebook who have helped me with this story, either as proof-readers or translators, or regarding other items of research. They know who they are, and I am grateful to every single one of them for the time they have taken from their lives to help me in mine.

** References: **

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Kelly, J. N. D., 1986; _The Oxford Dictionary of Popes_ ; Oxford University Press. Oxford.

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Talma, M., 2018; _An Experimental Diachronic Exploration of Patination Methodology of Dark Patinated (Arsenical) Copper Alloys on Case Studies from the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age and Early Iron Age_ ; Experimental Archaeology 2018/1 [Accessed 14th July 2020 at <https://exarc.net/issue-2018-1/ea/experimental-diachronic-exploration-patination-methodology-dark-patinated-arsenical-copper-alloys>] Persistent Identifier: https://exarc.net/ark:/88735/10337

Von Döllinger, J. J. I., 1840; _A History of the Church: Volume 2_ ; C. Dolman; Digitized version. [Accessed 13th July 2020 at <https://archive.org/details/a576124602dolluoft/page/n349/mode/2up>]

** Notes: **

Inscription on interior of the Wissembourg Box:

"O Sanctissima Trinitate; cum Beata Virgine Maria, Dei Matre, et cum Beato Ioseph, suo Sponsu; cum beatis Apostolis et omnibus Sanctis; et cum omnibus caelestibus archangelis ac angelis: custodi hoc vas a Maligni arcificiis et ab omnibus famulis suis; anulus in mundi maxima necessitate inveniatur a quibus voluntatem tuam facere affectant.

Ego, Iesse, Nostri Domini Iesu Christi humilissimus et fidelissimus servus, Papae Iulio, Nostri Sancti Patris ministro, hoc peto."

Translation:

"Oh, Holy Trinity; with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, and the blessed Joseph, her Spouse; with the blessed Apostles and all the Saints; with all the heavenly angels and the archangels: guard this vessel, from the power of the evil one, and from all his servants; that it may be the link/ring that is found in the greatest need of the world, by those who only wish to do thy will.

I, Jesse, faithful and humble servant of Jesus Christ Our Lord, I ask that at the behest of our Holy Father, Pope Julius."


End file.
